


What Our Lives Again Could Be

by tocourtdisaster



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Community: startrekbigbang, Explicit Language, Gen, Minor Character Death, Stockholm Syndrome, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-10
Updated: 2010-11-10
Packaged: 2017-10-13 04:08:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/132674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tocourtdisaster/pseuds/tocourtdisaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Winona Kirk's shuttle is captured by the <i>Narada</i> just moments after the destruction of the U.S.S. Kelvin, the very flow of history is changed once again, eventually leading to Sam Kirk entering into the role of unwitting hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Our Lives Again Could Be

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2010 [Star Trek Big Bang](http://community.livejournal.com/startrekbigbang).
> 
> The title for this story comes from "As Far As the Mind Can See, Pt. 3: They Know We Know" by Spock's Beard.
> 
> I played with the timelines more than just a little, drawing from both TOS and AOS canon to get the best fit for the story I wanted to tell; we'll just file that under the heading of 'AU.' All information on Romulan society comes from either Memory Alpha/Beta or my imagination. Since there's been no canon consensus on Sam Kirk's birthday, I've gone with the date given in "Echoes of Yesterday," that of September 7, 2229.
> 
> Gorgeous, gorgeous art by [shinychimera](http://shinychimera.livejournal.com/) can be found [HERE](http://shinychimera.livejournal.com/15421.html).
> 
> An absolutely fabulous mix by [emmypenny](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/) can be found [HERE](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/299137.html).

Winona knows as soon as the shuttle jerks that it’s all over. 

That ship, that monstrosity that George died to protect her from, has them in a tractor beam, is keeping them from fleeing, reeling them in to an almost certain death. She can hear the pilot cursing over the sound of the engines straining to break free, the whine of them growing louder and high pitched with every passing second. The doctor and nurses are digging through cabinets, searching for anything that can be used as a weapon since Starfleet has never stocked its medical shuttles with actual weaponry, arguing over the efficacy of hyposprays as offensive weapons. The baby in Winona’s arms, Jim, their Jim who was supposed to be born on Earth weeks from now, not in the middle of a battle, not moments before his father’s death, is crying that piteous little mewling sound that only newborn humans seem to make, his chest heaving with every breath he takes.

She knows she should be frightened or angry, but she doesn’t feel anything, not sadness or grief for George, or fear or anger for what’s to come once the shuttle is taken aboard that ship, or even love for this child in her arms. Some logical part of her mind supplies her with the fact that she’s probably slipping into shock, but the rest of her mind doesn’t seem to care. It’ll all be over soon enough anyway; what’s the point of worrying?

The shuttle shudders and bounces as it’s brought to a rather rough landing; sparks fly from the terminal above Winona’s head. She presses her cheek against the top of Jim’s head, covering his little body with hers, feels the sticky residue of blood and amniotic fluid on his skin that no one’s thought to wipe away. 

“I’m so sorry,” she whispers as the smell of melting aluminum and burning wiring reaches her nose. Shuttles are built to withstand a lot, but Winona knows the door won’t stand up long against a cutting torch. Jim is still crying, his whole body tensing and relaxing in turns as he flails his arms and legs against Winona’s already tender breasts.

The pilot rushes past Winona’s bed towards the shuttle door, where the doctor and nurses are huddled together with hyposprays and surgical instruments held like knives and clubs, ready to defend themselves. Winona hasn’t even bothered to unbuckle her safety harness. 

She’s not sure how much time passes, the cabin filling with toxic smoke, until the shuttle door practically explodes into the cabin and then there’s weapon’s fire and screaming and the smell of blood and burning flesh in the air. Winona doesn’t even realize she’s crying until she sees her tears falling onto Jim’s head.

As if the sight of her own tears is what her brain was waiting for, Winona can suddenly feel  _everything_. Her stomach cramps when she thinks of George, of hearing his scream of terror before the comm cut out. She’s sobbing so hard her throat starts to close up, her nose completely blocked by mucus. She’s struggling to breathe, knows she’s clutching Jim too hard to her chest. She thinks about Sam, back on Earth with George’s parents, and her heart breaks at the same time she rejoices that their request for Sam to join them on the  _Kelvin_  was denied. 

Sam is safe. 

Sam is  _safe_. 

 _Sam is safe._

The sound of boots on the deck is loud in the otherwise quiet shuttle.  _Everyone’s dead. Everyone’s dead and we’re next,_  Winona thinks, curling up tighter around Jim’s little body, knowing she won’t be able to protect him any longer, that she can’t protect him  _at all_ , that she’s completely failed as his mother.

The footsteps stop and Winona glances up and sees a man standing a few feet away from her biobed. No, not a man, she decides after a second; he’s male, but definitely not human, not with those ears or that brow. He looks Vulcan, but the obvious disdain on his face, the down-turned lips and slightly furrowed brow, the multiple facial tattoos she’s never seen on a Vulcan, keep her from believing him to be one.

“Who are you?” she asks, her throat thick with tears and grief. “Why are you doing this?”

“I am Ayel.” His Standard is unaccented, but something about the way he holds his vowels just slightly longer than necessary makes Winona think that he hadn’t learned it as a child, that it is at least his second language. “You are Winona Kirk and the child is James Kirk.”

“How do you--”

“Did you believe that your comm frequency was unmonitored? That we would be uninterested in the birth of James Kirk?”

“Who are you?” Winona asks again, feels the little knot in hysteria that took up residence in her chest the moment the red alert sounded start to unravel and push itself up and out her throat. “What do you want with us?”

“I am Ayel,” he repeats, his voice as even as before. “You will come with me.” He steps forward, his hands outstretched. Winona clutches Jim to her chest, but Ayel only unbuckles Winona’s safety harness and slips the straps off her shoulders until they catch on her bent elbows. “Now.”

Winona shrugs out of the harness and, cradling Jim in one arm, pushes herself upright slowly. Her body’s exhausted and she knows she can’t push herself or she’ll collapse, no matter how impatient Ayel becomes. She needs to stay awake and aware for Jim if not for herself.

She swings her legs over the edge of the biobed and stands and leans her hip against the edge of the bed for a moment until she regains her balance. She feels like she’s been torn wide open and her legs tremble from the effort of simply holding her weight.

Her first step is shaky, but not too bad, and the second and third go the same. By her fourth step, her heart is pounding in her chest, but she’s still upright. She stumbles on her fifth step and Ayel catches her elbows, holding her upright effortlessly while she gets her breath back. 

Jim is still crying, moving restlessly against her breast, and Winona bounces him a little in her arms as Ayel releases his grip on her, trying to calm him. “Shh, be quiet, baby, shh,” she croons at him, giving him her finger to suckle on. It won’t keep him quiet for long, but maybe long enough for Winona to figure out who these people are and what they want with her baby.

“Come,” Ayel says, clamping a firm hand around her upper arm and propelling her towards the hole in the shuttle door. “Captain Nero is waiting.”

Winona is led past the bodies of her shipmates, across the landing bay and through corridor after corridor, everything practically deserted; the few people she does see are all rushing past, presumably in the midst of repairs. Winona allows herself a smirk, proud of her husband for inflicting such damage on this ship before. 

Just before.

They enter a lift that creaks and groans as it moves and Winona takes the opportunity to lean against the wall, breathing deeply through her nose, her head bowed over Jim. She tucks his blanket tighter around his body, trying her best to swaddle him. He’s finally stopped his crying, but he’s still restless and Winona just wants him to be calm.

The lift opens onto the bridge or command center or whatever the hell these aliens call it and Ayel grabs her arm again, steering her towards a heavily tattooed man ( _no, not a man, an alien who looks like a Vulcan, who looks like a man,_  Winona reminds herself) seated in what Winona assumes is the captain’s chair in the center of the room.

Ayel comes to a halt, but keeps his hand on Winona’s arm so she can’t step away. “ _Prod_  Nero,” he says and the part of Winona’s mind that isn’t completely terrified wonders what the honorific means. “Winona and James Kirk.”

The man in the chair, Nero, turns towards her and Winona tries to take a step back but is stopped by Ayel’s hand still wrapped around her bicep. Nero’s eyes are dark and angry and Winona doesn’t think she’s imagining the insanity she sees there. She shifts Jim in her arms, holding him as close to her chest as she possibly can, wanting to,  _needing_  to protect him from this man, but knowing in her gut, in her soul, that she won’t be able to.

“Winona Kirk.” Nero’s voice is deep, gravelly, his Standard almost imperceptibly accented. “Welcome to the  _Narada_.”

  
\------

  
Sam Kirk is three years old when the men from Starfleet visit his grandparents, when Grandma cries all the time and doesn’t get out of bed, when Grandpa takes Sam to the shipyard with him, when Sam sits in a corner of Grandpa’s office playing with his toy ships while Grandpa makes calls about transfers and research and access to sensor logs.

Sam doesn’t know why Grandma and Grandpa are sad all the time, but he tries his best to make them happy. He takes his afternoon nap in their bed next to Grandma, curled up with his bear on Grandpa’s pillow and gives Grandma hugs and kisses and tells her he loves her. Grandpa gets to hear Sam do his ABCs and count to ten and sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Sam tries to be happy, but sometimes he’s sad too because he misses Mommy and Daddy and he wanted to go on the ship with them, but he had to stay here with Grandma and Grandpa, but Mommy and Daddy promised they’d call every Thursday (and Sam learned the days of the week just so he could know when to be sitting at the comm desk waiting for their call) and now it’s Friday and they still haven’t called yet.

When Sam asks Grandma why Mommy and Daddy haven’t called yet, she starts to cry again and Sam starts to cry, too, because he’s scared and he doesn’t even know why he’s scared.

“Maddie, what--” Grandpa says, coming around the corner from his office into the living room. Sam throws himself at Grandpa’s legs and then buries his face in Grandpa’s shoulder when he picks him up, one big hand on the back of Sam’s head, the other under Sam’s bum, holding him up. “Sammy, what’s wrong? Why are you and Grandma crying?”

Sam’s still hiccupping and crying and getting snot everywhere and usually, Grandpa gives him a tissue to blow his nose and wipe his tears, but he doesn’t do that this time, so Sam uses his hand and says, “I asked Grandma when Mommy and Daddy are gonna call.”

“Oh, Sammy,” Grandpa says, rubbing Sam’s back and walking him to the couch and sitting down next to Grandma, settling Sam in his lap and putting his arm around Grandma, who’s still crying into her hands. “Your Mom and Dad won’t be able to call anymore, kiddo.”

“Why?”

Grandpa breathes out and bows his head and Sam throws his arms around his neck again, giving him the biggest hug he can. “Grandpa, why?”

But Grandpa doesn’t answer.

Things don’t get any better after that. Sam doesn’t really understand what’s going on, just that Mommy and Daddy and the new baby aren’t ever coming home and that makes Grandma sad and Grandpa angry and the drinks in the locked cabinet, the grown-up drinks that Sam’s not allowed to even have a sip of, are starting to disappear.

Sam’s six years old before he really understands what happened that day, that Mom and Dad and the baby  _died_ , that Grandma cries, that Grandpa drinks because of a ship, a big black ship that destroyed the  _Kelvin_  and left behind nothing more than some sensor data and a lot of wreckage.

Sam sometimes dreams of black ships. He wakes up screaming and crying every time it happens.

  
\------

  
Winona only knows it’s been a Federation-standard year since she’s been stuck in this nightmare because she’s been using soap to keep a running tally on the mirror in her tiny bathroom. All the computer terminals in her room have been disabled for as long as she’s been kept here and no matter what she’s tried, she can’t get them to boot up. She’s a theoretical physicist and only has a passing familiarity with fixing her own systems; she couldn’t even dream of being able to make these computers work for her.

“Happy birthday, baby,” Winona says to James in Standard as she lifts him from the cargo-crate-turned-crib next to her bed. She repeats herself as best she can in Romulan, hating the way the words roll over her tongue, but knowing it’s for the best. 

The door chime echoes through the room as Winona is finishing dressing James and the door opens a moment later. It’s not Nijil bringing their breakfast tray in like every other morning for the past year, though; it’s Ayel walking through the door and behind him…

“ _Prod_  Nero,” Winona says, propping James up on her left hip and valiantly trying to hide her wince when he grabs a fistful of her hair and yanks. She can hear Ayel’s words from months ago echoing in her head.  _“Acknowledgement of pain is a sign of weakness,”_  he’d said as the doctor ran a regen over her bruised jaw, a souvenir from her latest ‘discussion’ with Nero.  _“To acknowledge pain is to let it rule your mind, if only for a moment. Such a moment is all an enemy needs to gain the advantage.”_  

Both Nero and Ayel smirk at her as the door slides closed. The silence drags on, but Winona will be damned if she’s the first one to speak. She may be willing to concede to too many things to keep herself and her son safe, but there are some things she refuses to do. She’s already shown weakness once in this encounter; she won’t do it again by asking why they’re here.

James squirms in her arms, babbling a mixture of Romulan and Standard, none of it making any sense. Winona shifts, cocking her hip a little to give James a more stable place to rest, and watches Nero watch James.

“You and the child will come with us,” Nero says slowly in Romulan after what feels like hours, but can’t have been more than a minute or two. He is still watching James, but Ayel’s eyes are locked on Winona and Winona shifts uncomfortably under the scrutiny. “It is time to give your grief substance.”

Before Winona can ask what that means, Ayel has stepped around Nero and plucked James from her arms. She starts to reach for her son, but stops when Ayel hands James to Nero; as crazy as Nero is, as violent as he’s gotten with Winona when she’s let her mouth run without consulting with her brain first, he’s never done more than look on James with pride in his eyes, the same look George had had in his eyes when he’d looked at Sam so long ago, the pride a father has in his son.

Winona forcibly pushes thoughts of George and Sam from her mind; they’re both lost to her and pining after them doesn’t do her any good.

Nero exits the room and Winona forces herself to follow, Ayel bringing up the rear of their little caravan. She can feel his gaze boring into her back and she wants to turn, to ask _why_  he watches her, but she already knows, she’s always known, she just won’t let herself,  _can’t_  let herself acknowledge it.

Nero leads them down corridors Winona’s never been in before and into a lift and then down even more unfamiliar corridors. After several minutes, he enters a room that’s empty save for two chairs and a table with a covered tray atop it.

“Sit,” Nero orders and Winona does so, Ayel taking the other seat. Nero stands behind Ayel’s right shoulder, holding James in one arm and running his other hand over James’s head and the fine blond hair there that’s only recently started to come in.

Ayel uncovers the tray and Winona sees that there’s a small pot of paint or ink, a small paintbrush, and what looks like a short, extremely fine tooth comb with a long handle bent at ninety degrees from the teeth.

“There is an ancient Romulan tradition,” Nero says as Ayel reaches for Winona’s left hand, straightening her fingers and pulling off the ring George placed there nearly six years ago, setting it on the tray before he undoes the top three buttons on Winona’s shirt and parts the sides to bare her chest. Winona barely bites back a gasp as Ayel’s fingers brush the swell of her breast. She meets Ayel’s eye and what she sees there makes the bottom of her stomach drop out at the same time she’s forcing her body not to recoil from his touch.

Nero is still speaking, seemingly oblivious to Winona’s reaction. “When a loved one died, you would paint your grief upon your skin, ancient symbols of love and loss. In time, the paint would fade and when it was gone, the period of mourning would be over and life would go on. We on this ship have painted these symbols upon our skin, but we have burned them deep. They will never fade because life does not go on. We died with our friends. We died with our families. We died when Romulus died.

“And now,” Nero says, his gaze burning into Winona, “it is time for the tradition to be upheld.”

Winona watches Ayel pick up the brush and dip it into the ink, but keeps her chin raised as he leans close and brings the brush to the hollow of her throat, turning her gaze to Nero. The ink is cold against her skin, but she doesn’t flinch, just watches Nero’s smile of pride (in her, she’s certain he’s proud of  _her_  right now for taking this as a Romulan would, and that thought makes her head spin) as Ayel paints ancient symbols across her collarbones. 

The first tap of needles into her skin is a shock, but Winona grits her teeth, refusing to show weakness. Ayel works methodically, the needles lighting a fire in her skin as the ink is pounded into her body, into her  _soul_ , and she lets herself think of George, of Sam back on Earth, of the hole in her heart that will never again be filled, and ruthlessly pushes back her tears.

Nero smiles, predatory and light years away from reassuring, James held securely in his arms, and says, “Now you are one of us.”

  
\------

  
Sam is ten when Grandpa finally manages to drink himself to death and he’s rather vindictively glad the old man’s finally gone. He doesn’t remember his parents and constantly being compared to them by a bitter old man and never measuring up hasn’t really done Sam any good.

He holds Grandma’s hand at the funeral and hands her new tissues when she uses up all the ones from her purse, but he can see her relief even through her tears. At least now it’s over, for the both of them.

The funeral is short, with only a couple of Grandpa’s old ‘Fleet buddies getting up to talk and less than an hour after it starts, it’s all over and they’re headed home. Sam shucks his jacket and tie as soon as he’s in the car and runs his hands through his carefully combed hair and almost immediately feels more like himself.

Grandma sets the car on auto and turns in her seat to face Sam and says, “How would you feel about leaving Iowa?”

“How soon can we go?” Sam asks, barely sparing a thought for his friends and his life here. He’ll make new friends wherever they end up; he’d have to make new friends when he got to middle school next fall anyway, whether they stay in Riverside or not.

Three days later, everything they’re taking with them has been packed up and everything else put up for sale, including the house, and they’re on a shuttle headed for California.

They stop in San Francisco long enough to realize they don’t want to live there, not with the constant ‘Fleet presence and reminders of the Kirk legacy, so they get a new car and redirect their moving service to Sacramento where Grandma’s got family—a great-niece who’s willing to put them up for a few weeks while they look for a place of their own.

Sam hates it there.

Libby, Grandma’s niece, has three kids and not a whole lot of space, so Sam ends up in a room with two other boys and he’s never not had his own space, as much of it as he’s wanted, and the culture shock of being ‘one of the boys’ is almost more than he can handle. 

And it’s too loud and not just because of the crazy crush of bodies he’s not used to. The house is in the suburbs, but there’s still traffic going by at all hours of the day and night and it’s never  _really_  dark and he can’t see the stars from the backyard like he could back in Iowa and it’s not  _home_ , but he can’t say that to Grandma, not when it’s so easy to see that she’s happier here than she ever was back in Riverside.

So Sam goes to school and tries to make friends, but pretty much alienates everyone after he manages to consistently score the highest in pretty much every subject within his first week of classes. He’s the new kid, the one no one really acknowledges in hopes that he’ll disappear back to where he came from.

He tries not to let it get him down, tries to just push through it because he’s nothing if not stubborn, hopes things get better and settle down, but then three weeks after they get to Sacramento, Grandma finds a house across town from Libby’s and Sam’s got to start all over in a new school.

But Grandma’s happy and it seems like Sam’s spent his entire life compromising that it doesn’t even cross his mind to complain, so he starts over again. At least now he’s got his own room (nothing at all like his room back home) and he’s back to being an only child (he still has cousins, though, which is strange and new), but it’s still too bright and too loud.

As soon as their boxes arrive, Sam sets out the one photo he has of his parents, from right before they left on the  _Kelvin_ , Mom’s pregnancy just barely starting to show, on his nightstand next to his still bare bed, the same place it’s been for as long as he can remember. Everything else in his life might be in turmoil, but at least this one thing can stay the same. He  _needs_  it to stay the same.

“Sam, come and help me with the kitchen!”

Sam wonders, staring at the photo, how different things would’ve been if his parents were still around. What would his little brother or sister be like? Would they all still live in Iowa? Would Grandpa still be alive?

Would Sam be happy?

“Sam? Are you alive up there?”

“Yeah, coming!” Sam calls back, shaking his head like that could somehow get the wha- ifs out of his brain. That doesn’t stop him from turning the photo facedown before he barrels his way down the stairs and towards the kitchen to help Grandma unpack.

  
\------

  
The day James turns ten, Nero comes to their rooms to take James away. 

“The time for boyhood has ended,” he says, his hand clamped tightly around James’s arm. Winona can see James’s wince, can see how badly her son wants to cry out against the pain, but is holding himself silent. If Nero says it’s time for James to become an adult, then he will be punished as an adult for any lapses in behavior and that includes admitting to any sort of discomfort, let alone pain.

Winona wants to beg, to plead for her son, but she knows better than to try; knowing Nero as she does, he would punish James for Winona’s words and Winona would rather die than be the cause of James’s hurts.

(She ignores the little voice in her head that still sounds like George after all these years telling her that it  _is_  her fault they’re here now, that she could have ended it all those years ago on the shuttle, that an overdose of pain meds would have been a painless way to go for the both of them.)

“Will I see him again?” Winona finally asks because, for all that she’s learned of Romulan culture over the years from Ayel and the books he’s brought her, she knows nothing about coming of age rituals. She doesn’t know if Nero remembers that James is human, that his body can’t take the same sort of abuse that a Romulan of the same age could take, and she worries about James dying some sort of horrific death because Nero doesn’t remember that, for all his assertions that James is his son, that James is relatively fragile. 

“Not until he has passed his trials,” Nero says and drags James from the room before Winona can so much as take a breath, let alone ask what kind of trials James will be facing. She could follow them, demand that Nero answer her questions, but her ribs are still sore from the last time she questioned Nero in front of the crew.

She sits down heavily on the edge of her bed; with her legs stretched out, her feet almost reach James’s narrow cot against the opposite wall. She supposes someone will be coming soon to take it away and before she can think about it too much, Winona strips the bed of its linens and carefully folds and stores them on the high shelf in her small closet.

It’s not enough, not nearly enough, but it’s better than nothing and it’s all she’s got. Winona’s gotten good these past ten years at making the best of a bad situation.

She can’t stay here another minute so she heads for the door, slaps her palm hard against the sensor. She hasn’t been under constant lock and key since she completed the mourning ritual when James was barely more than a baby, but the door’s never slid open for her like it does for Nero and Ayel and even Nijil, who still occasionally visits her though he hasn’t brought her breakfast in years. 

Ayel is waiting for her, leaning casually against the bulkhead across the corridor, arms folded across his chest, smirk firmly in place. “The captain believed you would follow after him immediately,” Ayel says, pushing away from the wall and matching Winona step for step as she gets as far away from her room as quickly as she can. “I did not believe you would act so rashly.”

“There’s no need to sound so smug,” Winona says, turning down the first cross corridor she comes to, not at all certain where she’s headed except  _away_. “You don’t know me half as well as you think you do.”

“I know you are lost, adrift, lacking in purpose,” Ayel says and when Winona glances out the side of her eye at him, she sees that he’s adopted his habitual pose: hands clasped behind his back, eyes forward, long stride eating up the ground beneath him. “You have had no other duties than to raise your son and now that duty is gone.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know,” Winona snaps, taking another corner, moving steadily deeper and deeper into the ship.

“Your knowledge of theoretical physics may be able to save Romulus.”

Winona stops short in the middle of the corridor, wheeling around to face Ayel. He’s got his head cocked to the side, smirk in place, boldly meeting Winona’s eye. 

“What are you talking about?” Winona snaps, barely holding in check the impulse to slap that smug smirk right off of Ayel’s face. 

“Ambassador Spock has not yet appeared in this timeline,” Ayel says, stepping closer to Winona and out of the way of a passing crewmember. “If we know when and where that will occur, we can intercept his ship and gain control of the red matter.”

“And I’m the only physicist on board, the only person with any hope of finding an answer,” Winona says. It’s not a question. They both know there’s no one better suited for this kind of work.

“Yes.”

Winona pauses, thinks about the logistics of even attempting such a feat. It seems impossible, but so did time travel once upon a time.

“I will need full access to all sensor logs from before, during, and after the  _Narada_ ’s trip through the singularity,” she says, “including internal and external, through the time of the  _Kelvin_ ’s destruction.” That last bit isn’t necessary and she’s certain Ayel knows that; seeing the destruction of the  _Kelvin_  is for her. She knows they monitored the comm feed she and George were on and she just wants to hear his voice again, just one more time. “I’ll also need full access to the ship’s library, specifically all scientific texts that even remotely pertain to time travel.”

“The captain has already granted permission and set aside a secondary sensor lab for your use,” Ayel says, turning Winona around with a hand on her arm and then leading her back in the direction they came from. “You will begin immediately.”

  
\------

The first time someone attempts to recruit Sam for Starfleet, he’s seventeen years old and about to graduate from high school at the top of his class. He’d taken the Starfleet Entrance Exams on a lark, just to see how he’d score and he’d apparently gotten one of the highest scores in not only the state, but the entire continent. 

He honestly doesn’t think much of it at first. So what if he’s proven himself a certifiable genius? That doesn’t change who he is or what he wants to do with his life, so it hardly matters.

He’d like to say he’s surprised when the recruiter shows up on their doorstep early on Saturday morning in late April, but that’d be a lie. He’s been expecting Starfleet to show some overt interest ever since he got his test results nearly eight weeks ago; he just never thought it’d take this long.

The woman is tall and fairly young for a recruiter, maybe thirty, dark hair pulled into a tight bun, serious brown eyes. She’s wearing trousers instead of the minidress uniform Sam’s always seen female ‘Fleet officers wearing, which is intriguing.

“George Kirk?” Her voice is deeper than Sam would have expected and slightly accented, impossible to place from just those two words.

“He died fourteen years ago,” Sam says. He knows it’s unfair, since he had to take the exams under his legal name, but no one’s ever called him George to his face. George is his father and will always be his father. He’s Sam, simple as that.

The woman, a lieutenant commander according to her stripes, consults her PADD before saying, “George Samuel Kirk, Jr., is listed as having completed the Starfleet Entrance Exams in January of this year. How is that possible if he died fourteen years ago?”

“I took the S.E.E.,” Sam says, slouching against the doorframe, meeting the woman’s eye. “I’m Sam. My father, George, died when I was a child.”

“I apologize for the mix up,” she says, tucking her PADD back under her arm. “Your legal name is listed as George Kirk and I assumed that you would like to be addressed as such.”

Sam snorts. This lady is crazy if she thinks that a half-assed apology will get her in his good graces or even just through the front door and into the house. “You’d think Starfleet would’ve trained that out of you,” he says, “you know, what with their focus on learning all the facts before forming an opinion.”

He thinks of the PADD upstairs in his desk drawer with ‘Fleet Intelligence’s final report on the destruction of the  _Kelvin_ , almost fifteen years after the fact. They’d refrained from making any definitive conclusions, but Sam’s smart and he knows how to read between the lines. The Federation may not want to admit it, but they know it was a Romulan ship out there that day that left no survivors; they won’t say that, though, not until it’s been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, which’ll never happen.

“I can assure you that that’s not a bad thing, certainly not as bad as you’re making it sound,” the recruiter says, shifting her weight around and Sam knows she’s doing it purposefully, is trying to get him to invite her in.  _Well too bad, lady,_  he thinks.  _Ain’t no way you’re getting any further into my life than you already are._

The silence that falls between them is light-years from comfortable and Sam lets it stretch on, unwilling to lend the recruiter a metaphorical hand. She came to see him; let her figure out how to navigate the conversational landscape.

“We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot,” she says eventually. “My name is Cora Whitley. I’m a recruiter for Starfleet Academy sent to speak to you in regards to your S.E.E. scores and the fact that, despite how highly you scored, you haven’t yet applied for admission.”

“That’s because I have absolutely no intentions of joining Starfleet,” Sam says, meeting Whitley’s eye, trying to will her into seeing that he’s completely sincere. “I just wanted to see how I compared with everyone else in my class.”

“If I could come in, I’d like to discuss this further with you, let you know about the opportunities offered by a career in Starfleet,” Whitley says, stepping forward, but Sam refuses to budge and they end up toe to toe, and Sam barely has to look down to meet her eye, she’s that tall.

“Sorry, no,” he tells her. “Like I said, I have no interest in joining Starfleet. You have a nice day, now.” He steps back and triggers the door controls, the door sliding shut on the woman’s surprised face.

Whitley must file some sort of report after that because no one comes to follow up on her visit, which he knows is pretty standard. Rick Myslie, who Sam has advanced biochem with, had three different recruiters stop by, all of them wearing him down until he finally caved and signed the enlistment papers. Meanwhile, Sam sends his letter of intent to attend to UCSF and finalizes his enrollment in their molecular biology program. 

Good riddance, he thinks.

  
\------

  
Winona is asleep when the door opens, spilling light into her small quarters and over her face. She wakes immediately, her hand going to the knife underneath her pillow as her eyes struggle to adjust to the sudden light.

Someone steps into the doorway, no more than a dark silhouette against the corridor light. Winona tosses her blankets off and sits up, setting her feet flat against the floor. Her hand is still on her knife.

“Get dressed and come with me.” So it’s Nijil in the doorway, then, acting as no more than an errand boy tonight.

“What’s going on?” Winona asks, stepping over to her closet, knife still in hand. She sets it down on the shelf so she can strip of her sleepwear and get into her clothes, unworried about modesty; Nijil will look or not and neither is her concern. She straps her dagger to her thigh last, considers adding the knife from her bed to the small of her back, but decides she won’t need it. If she’s being awoken in the middle of the night, she’ll either need no weapons or more weapons than are available to her; the one visible dagger should be enough to appease Nero that she’s not become complacent.

“James has reached his final trial,” Nijil says, stepping aside so Winona can exit her quarters. Winona’s heart jumps at the mention of her son; it’s been weeks without news of him. “As his parent, you are required to witness his passage into adulthood.”

“And this couldn’t have waited until morning?” Winona asks, following Nijil to the lift at the end of the corridor. As anxious as she is to see James and see him unharmed, she cannot let her mask of indifference slip. She’s worked too hard to build that mask over top her worry these past several years to slip up now, not when she’s so close to seeing James again.

“No,” Nijil says and offers no further explanation.

Winona doesn’t bother to ask any more questions since Nijil is so obviously reticent to answer them. Answers will just have to wait until she’s able to question Nero himself.

They exit the lift eight decks down from Winona’s quarters, on a level that houses nothing but cargo bays and small, secondary landing bay. Winona’s never had cause to come this far into the belly of the ship, not since her shuttle was captured all those years ago, something she rarely, if ever, thinks about. Playing what-if has never been a favorite pastime of hers, doubly so after that day.

Nijil leads the way, past cargo bays that were once filled with raw ore but that now sit empty, their primary purpose unfulfilled. Winona knows how they feel.

After several minutes, they turn into a half-lit cargo bay, one that’s been converted into an obstacle course of sorts, more nightmarish than practical to Winona’s eyes. There are empty cargo crates stacked in haphazard piles that look likely to fall at the slightest provocation. Platforms of several different heights are arranged seemingly at random throughout the space. Loops of heavy chains hang from the high ceiling to just above Winona’s head. And at the center of it all stands James.

Winona’s breath catches in her throat, but she forces herself to continue moving normally until she’s at Nero’s side a handful of meters away from her son. She can’t seem to take her eyes away from him. He’s so much taller than she’s ever imagined, less than a head shorter than Winona, but he’s so thin. He’s dressed in layers of cloth and leather, but it’s easy to see how it all hangs on him, how he’s nowhere near filling it all out the way it’s intended. His eyes (so blue, so blue, just like George’s, oh god, just like George’s) are on Nero and don’t even flicker the slightest towards Winona.

“ _Prod_  Nero,” Winona says, angling her body so she can see both Nero and James at the same time. James still hasn’t looked at her. Ayel, on Nero’s other side, watches her carefully. “What is going on?”

“James has reached his final trial,” Nero says, and Winona wonders if that phrase is rote on Romulus.

“This couldn’t have waited until the morning?” Winona asks, bracing her body for the blow she knows is coming for her impertinence. It never comes.

“No, it could not,” Nero answers. He doesn’t even bother to turn away from James when he addresses her. Winona meets Ayel’s eye behind Nero’s back, trying to convey her need to know what’s going on. Ayel just barely shakes his head, the movement so slight that she wouldn’t have seen it if she hadn’t been looking for it.

“Why? What is all of this?” Winona asks then.

Nero finally looks at Winona, but James doesn’t move, eyes forward and on Nero at all times. “This is James’s final trial. Should he pass, he will be welcomed as a man by the crew.”

“And if he should fail?” 

“There will be no second chance provided.” Nero’s eyes, like his voice, are cold, devoid of empathy and Winona knows that failure in this instance, like in so many others, equals death and there is nothing she can do to change that. She can’t save James. James will have to save himself.

Nero turns away and Winona knows the time for questions is over. Whatever’s going to happen will happen and there is nothing Winona can do to stop it. She turns, facing James, and waits.

“Begin,” Nero says and James flies into motion, ducking around piles of crates, moving over and under platforms, using the chains to move quickly between platforms of various heights. Winona sees three armed men move from the periphery of the maze, all working their way towards James, knife blades glimmering in the half-light. 

Winona forces herself to stay still and watch and not interfere. It is the hardest thing she can remember doing.

James swings from a chain, his booted feet connecting solidly with the side of one man’s head, knocking him from his feet. The impact with the floor knocks his knife away and almost before Winona can blink, James has the knife in hand and the man’s blood, sprayed from his slit throat, on his face.

In short order, James has killed another man with a blade to the heart before getting his hands around the final man’s throat. James’s hands have to be slick with blood; Winona can’t imagine how he’s holding on so tightly, but he is, clinging to the man’s back, legs wrapped tight around his ribs, fingers digging into his throat.

The man falls to his knees and then onto his back, pinning James, and James still holds on. Minutes pass and still James holds on. Finally, an age later, he pulls his hands away and rolls the body away. He stands, rock steady, covered in blood, barely breathing any heavier than normal, and moves until he’s right before Nero. He kneels at Nero’s feet, head bowed, pilfered knife in hand, its tip pressed against the deck.

Nero reaches out and rests his hand against James’s head. “Good job,” he says and Winona feels a shock go through her at the praise; she’s never, in nearly fifteen years, heard a positive word come from Nero. 

“Thank you, Father,” James says and it’s the first time Winona’s heard his voice in years; it’s deeper than she remembers, but not as deep as she would have expected it to be. Something twists deep in her gut at the word  _father_ , but it’s as true a description of their relationship as anything.

“Rise, James,” Nero says, his hand on James’s shoulder. “You are a man now.”

“I am a man now,” James repeats and Winona recognizes the words as part of a ritual. Two sets of eyes turn to her, one dark, the other blue, and she can see her cue as plain as day.

“You are a man now,” she says and rests her hand on James’s other shoulder, the three of them forming a triangle the sea of bodies that suddenly surround them.

James is a man now.

  
\------

  
Sam finishes his undergrad degree in three years to the surprise of no one. Gram cries all through the graduation ceremony, smile bright enough to power the entire city, and laughs when Sam wraps his arms around her after the ceremony is over.

“Just ignore me, baby,” she tells him as she pulls away. “I’m so proud of you.” She cradles his face between her palms and presses a kiss to his forehead. Sam swallows away the lump in this throat and wonders if his mom would have looked at him with as much love and pride in her eyes as Gram does.

He wraps an arm around Gram’s shoulders and presses a kiss to her hair, steering her through the crowd and towards the exit. They go out to dinner to celebrate and in the morning, Sam gets Gram onto a shuttle headed back to Sacramento and, for the first time since middle school, Sam lets himself wonder what the hell he’s supposed to do now.

He doesn’t even make it out of the shuttleport before he’s stopped by a man in the uniform of an SFA instructor.

“Mister Kirk?” the man asks, holding a hand out in invitation. Sam shakes his hand and waits for him to continue. This is a sales pitch that Sam’s not particularly interested in hearing and there’s no way he’s going to help this guy out any more than necessary. “I’m Captain Pike and I was wondering if you had a few minutes to talk.”

Sam thinks about it for a long moment. Really, what does he have to do that can’t wait ten minutes to hear the guy out? It’s not like he’s going to change Sam’s mind about Starfleet, not when Sam’s already been accepted into Stanford’s biochemistry post-grad program. He’s headed there come September and nothing this man can say will change his mind. It won’t hurt anything to hear him out.

 _What the hell,_  Sam decides and says, “I can give you ten minutes.”

“I’ve seen your test scores, Kirk,” is Pike’s opening gambit. It’s pretty weak as far as Sam is concerned. “They’re off the charts. There’s no denying you’re a genius, but I wonder what you plan on doing with yourself once you’ve completed your education.”

“I’ve got a little bit of time to figure it out,” Sam says, “since I’ve still got years left until I’m done with my Ph.D.”

“If you enlisted in Starfleet, we could promise you access to the best labs, the best teachers, on the planet,” Pike tells him. “You could be on the cutting edge of biochemical research.”

“I’m already going to be on the cutting edge,” Sam replies. “Doctor Mettus is the best in the field and he’s at Stanford, where I’ll be studying under him in a few months.”

“Doctor Mettus is a member of Starfleet,” Pike says, and, yes, Sam knew that already, but that fact’s never been very important in his mind. Mettus works out of the labs at Stanford, not SFA. He’s really only a ‘Fleeter in name. “And he has agreed to teach at the Academy next term.”

Sam stops dead and faces Pike. “He what?”

“Doctor Mettus will be teaching at the Academy starting next term and continuing into the foreseeable future,” Pike says, the corner of his mouth quirked in a smile.

“Fuck, man, you really want  _me_  for Starfleet that badly?” Sam asks, suddenly too exhausted to even be angry at this blatant manipulation. “Why? What did I ever do that makes you think Starfleet needs me?”

“You’re smart and you’re a legacy, two things we can always use more of,” Pike says and Sam has to give the man this; at least he’s honest about his motives. A goddamned sneaky bastard, but honest.

“So because all I want to do is to study under Doctor Mettus, you convinced him to teach at the Academy, just to get me to enlist?” Sam says, just to make sure he’s got it straight in his head. It seems ridiculous. All that work, all the upset it’ll cause when the other post grad students learn that Doctor Mettus got lured away to SFA because of Sam.

“Long story short, yes, that’s it exactly,” Pike says. He’s grinning like he knows what Sam’s answer is going to be and, Sam has to admit, he probably does. “So, what do you say?”

Sam’s been working to study with Doctor Mettus since his first semester at UCSF. It’s always been his goal. He’d turned down Johns Hopkins for Stanford, all because that’s where Doctor Mettus has been for years, longer than Sam’s even been interested in biochem. Signing on with Starfleet isn’t so much different from that, despite the ten-year minimum service contract. 

Sam can’t help but laugh, wondering when his life got to the point where spending ten years in Starfleet isn’t the worst idea in the world. “Yeah, sure, why the fuck not?”

By the time Sam’s ready for lunch, he’s officially enlisted in Starfleet Academy as a post-graduate student and wondering how, exactly, he’s going to break the news to Gram.

  
\------

  
Winona doesn’t approve of Nero’s plans to raid the Klingon outpost for supplies, but Winona’s displeasure has never stopped Nero from doing what he wants, no matter what that might be, and it doesn’t stop him now. They’re not exactly running out of basic necessities, but they are running low and it’s been a long time since that Denobulan-run medical supply ship they commandeered months ago.

“James will lead the mission,” Nero tells her, striding into her lab without so much as a by-your-leave. “If he survives, he will take up the rank that awaits him.”

“And what rank is that?” she asks, turning her back on the screen full of equations and standing, trying to even the playing field a little, though Nero still towers over her. “Will he become your second? I’ve no doubt that Ayel would object to that.”

“Ayel will not complain,” Nero says, stepping closer, moving right into Winona’s personal space, not that she’s ever had much where Nero is concerned; she belongs to him and they both know that and nothing Winona might say could ever change that. Nero brings his hand up to rest against the side of her neck, his thumb just barely brushing the tattoos visible at the base of her throat. “Just as he has never complained before.”

Winona feels her heart thumping wildly in her chest and curses Nero for positioning his hand where he can feel every traitorous beat of her pulse before he spoke. Still, she tries to will her heart to calm itself. “What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about, Winona,” Nero says, his fingers tightening their hold. “He watches you. He has always watched you. You and I both see it. But he will never speak of it because he knows he will never have you. You are  _mine_.”

“Stop.” Winona tries to make it a command, but the hand around her throat is threatening to choke off her air supply and all that comes out is a croaking gasp. Black spots start to dance around the edges of her vision. She needs to stop this, now, before she blacks out. She doesn’t have any chance of prying his hand from her throat, that she knows as sure as she knows that she’s being slowly suffocated. She does have her knives, though pulling a weapon on the captain is always a dangerous proposition.

 _Fuck it,_  she decides.  _I haven’t survived this long only to be strangled to death because Nero’s possessive and jealous of a man who’ll never make a move._

Before Winona can make a grab for the dagger strapped to her thigh, though, Nero releases his hold, flinging Winona away. She slams, choking and coughing, into the console at her back, the one still covered in equations and notations integral to Nero’s search for the Vulcan responsible for everything, the one who allowed Romulus to be destroyed, the one who started the chain of events that landed Winona here on the  _Narada_. The Vulcan Winona would kill herself if given the chance. 

“Get back to work,” Nero practically spits out before turning and stalking, there’s really no other word for it, from the room. Winona watches him go, gently rubbing at the bruised flesh on her throat, not wincing even though she’s alone. It’s been a long time since she’s shown pain, not even the few times she’s been left alone in Nero’s quarters, the only rooms Winona is certain are not under surveillance, has she reacted to pain, and she’ll be damned if she regresses now.

She gingerly pushes herself up from the floor and thumps down into her chair, leaning heavily against her console. She’s still leaning, head in hand, when she hears the door slide open again and the almost silent footsteps of her son entering the lab.

“Mother?”

“Yes, James?” She pushes herself upright, ignoring the lightheadedness when she gets to her feet and turns to face him. “What do you need?”

“You’re injured,” James says instead of answering, stepping forward and, in a bizarre repeat of Nero’s actions of just minutes before, brings his hand up to her throat, his fingers gentle against the blossoming bruises. His eyes, the eyes he inherited from George, are bright with worry, worry for her, a weakness that could be exploited, should she wish to do so. She files the look away in her mind to be used another day when it would better suit her purposes. “What happened?”

“Captain Nero saw fit to make a point,” Winona says, tilting her head back and to the side to allow James access to her neck. He gets close enough that his hair, cut close to his scalp, brushes the underside of her chin. His concern is suddenly too much, too smothering, and Winona grabs his shoulders and pushes him away, knowing he’s allowing her to manhandle him, that she could never make him do anything he didn’t want to do.

“You should see the doctor,” James insists, his hand on her arm, trying to lead her from the room.

“It’s nothing to be concerned about,” Winona says, jerking her arm from his grasp. “It will heal in its own time and until then, it will serve as a reminder to mind my tongue around the captain.”

“I will speak with the captain about this,” James says, dropping his hand to his side and the disruptor holstered there. The threat is implicit and bold for James to make in a room they both know is monitored. “He has no right to treat you this way.”

“You will do no such thing,” Winona snaps. She’s worked too hard for too long to keep her son alive for him to waste it all in an unneeded show of bravado and she will not stand aside and watch that happen. “Nero is the captain and he has  _every_  right to discipline his crew in any way he sees fit. Challenging him will only get you killed and that is unacceptable.”

James is silent for a long moment before he nods his head, stepping away from Winona and she breathes freely again. Too many people have gotten too far into her space today and it’s made her twitchy, fingers itching for the handle of her dagger. She also wants to get back to her work, but she dares not turn her back on James, not after she’s chided him and his hand is still on his disruptor. She’s close to a breakthrough, though; she can almost see the solution, the equation that will make the sensor readings make sense and will allow them to find Spock.

“Why are you here, James?” she asks instead, folding her hands behind her back, pressing against the small knife sheathed there.

“I’ve been chosen to lead the raid on the Klingon outpost,” he says, his back going impossibly straighter, his chest puffing out in pride and Winona has to restrain herself from rolling her eyes. James may be a man, but he is still a relatively untried child when it comes to leadership.

“I’m already aware of that,” Winona tells him and watches his shoulders drop just the barest amount, an amount so miniscule that she never would have noticed it if she hadn’t been looking for it. 

“Captain Nero is allowing me to choose my own team,” he says, narrowing his eyes. He knows she saw him telegraph his disappointment, she realizes; he’s waiting for her to comment on it. Well, he can just keep waiting, then. This is another of her son’s weaknesses that will not be exploited until a more opportune moment.

“Who have you decided on, then?” she asks, impatient that James is drawing this conversation out. He knows she has better things to be doing, that she’s getting close to cracking the equations that have been her life’s work for the past decade. She knows he’s doing it on purpose, but that doesn’t keep her annoyance at bay.

“I haven’t made any final decisions yet, but I have given though to Ayel,” James says, eyes like a hawk watching Winona. She doesn’t give him the satisfaction of a visible response to his statement, though it feels like the bottom of her stomach drops out. She wonders if taking Ayel is James’s idea or if it’s something Nero planted in his mind to get Ayel off the ship and into harm’s way. Not that it matters whose idea it was originally because they both lead to the same outcome; if Nero has his way, Winona has no doubt that Ayel will not return to the  _Narada_.

“Ayel would be a good choice,” Winona says, careful to keep her tone even lest James infer more than he should. He already sees too much for Winona’s comfort. James is too like Nero for anyone’s good.

James nods and says, “I need to finish picking my team; I’ll leave you to your work.” He turns crisply on his heel and strides out the door, leaving Winona alone once again.

  
\------

  
Sam shouldn’t even be on this recruiting run. He’s an instructor, not a recruiter; his interaction with new recruits is in the classroom only, where he is their god and his word is law. Out here, back in Iowa (someplace he never thought he’d see again, though it’s somewhat gratifying to see that nothing’s really changed in fifteen years), he’s got no authority. He’s just Lieutenant Commander Kirk, stuck serving under Captain Pike, the  _actual_  recruiter for this run.

Sam shouldn’t even be here, which is why he  _definitely_  shouldn’t have to deal with the man who’s locked himself in the head.

“Sir, you need to come out from there,” Sam calls through the closed door, feeling like a moron in front of the rest of these young, impressionable cadets who are all watching him with varying degrees of amusement, pity, and confusion.

“No way in hell am I coming outta here before we’re in San Fran,” the man calls back, and Sam revises his opinion. This guy isn’t only a pain in his ass, he’s also drunk, if the slurring is anything to go by. God, he does not need this today.

“We cannot guarantee that you won’t be injured on takeoff or landing, or even if we hit a patch of turbulence, unless you are properly strapped into your seat in the passenger compartment,” Sam says, leaning against the door, the metal cool against his temple.

“I’m fine where I am!”

“Cadet, if you don’t open this door in the next ten seconds, I will override the door locks and drag your sorry ass back to your seat,” Sam says, thoroughly sick of being nice. Just because he’s not the man in charge on this run doesn’t mean he doesn’t have any authority over recalcitrant cadets.

“I’d like to see you try!”

“That’s it.” Sam pushes himself upright and stabs his override into the keypad and presses the open button. The display asks,  _Are you sure you would like to complete this command?_  He signals his affirmative with maybe a little more force than is strictly necessary, but this guy’s already on his last nerve and he’s not okay with a computer questioning him like that, even though he knows that question is only there to maintain some sense of propriety.

The door eventually slides open and Sam has the cadet hauled out of the closet-sized room before the man’s even realized he’s there. He’s just a tad taller than Sam, but scruffy as all get out, with at least three days worth of beard and greasy, lank hair. Now that Sam’s face to face with him, he can smell the whiskey coming off him in waves, can see that his eyes are having trouble focusing.

“You need to have a seat,  _Cadet_ ,” Sam says, steeling his voice in his best impersonation of Captain Pike. He’s found, these past few years, that that’s the best way to get someone to listen to him; apparently, Sam doesn’t actually sound all that intimidating when he’s not putting on a show.

“I had a seat,” Scruffy says, yanking his arm from Sam’s grasp, “in the bathroom, where it was nice and safe.”

“If you do not sit down in your seat, I will make you sit down and you will regret not listening to me in the first place,” Sam tells the man, getting right up into his face. He tries to breath in through his mouth to avoid the smell, but that’s almost worse because now he can  _taste_  the whiskey fumes and stale B.O.

“Fine, fine,” Scruffy finally grates out, before stomping over to the last empty seat and plopping himself down. Sam watches him struggle with the restraints for a minute before he finally gets them straightened and properly secured. Sam’s about to turn around and head back for the cockpit when the man pulls out a flask and takes a hit, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows down what Sam would wager is fairly cheap whiskey, based on how the man had smelled.

Sam should go over there, get the man’s name and have his demerit written up before they’ve even reached cruising altitude, but he’s sick of the man right now and he figures it’ll keep until they get back to San Francisco. Besides, it’ll hold more weight if the censure comes from Captain Pike instead of just a lowly instructor who got shanghaied into sitting second seat on a recruiting run when Commander Barrett flaked out.

(Not that Sam can really blame the woman; it’s kind of hard to manage a gaggle of cadets when you’re in the midst of a mental breakdown and in a locked ward at SF Medical.)

“Whatever,” Sam mutters, turning away from the passenger compartment full of young and impressionable cadets before cursing a blue streak under his breath. He does not get paid enough to deal with this kind of shit.

“Problems, Kirk?” Pike asks, not even bothering to look at Sam as he runs through the pre-flight sequence.

“Just a drunk trying to ride out the flight in the head,” Sam replies, plopping down in the copilot’s chair and strapping himself in before starting his own checks. “Just so you know, I am never doing this again.”

“That’s what I said after my first run,” Pike says, smirking at Sam like he knows something Sam doesn’t. It’s annoying, is what it is. “Now here we are, three years later and I’m still carting cadets across the world and to see the as-of-yet-unfinished new flagship.”

“At least you’ve got  _Enterprise_  to look forward to,” Sam says, settling back in his seat while Pike takes manual control and gets them off the ground and headed west.

“So do you, Kirk,” Pike says and Sam whips his head around to look at him. Pike just laughs, eyes still focused on the controls. “Don’t look so shocked; why did you think you hadn’t gotten a permanent assignment yet?”

“I- I don’t know,” Sam stutters out, completely gobsmacked. “I didn’t realize.”

 _Enterprise_. The pretty lady of the new fleet. Everyone’s jonesing to get assigned to her, Sam included. She’s completely state of the art, with some sort of new warp engines that make the Engineering cadets all sorts of excited that Sam doesn’t really understand, but she’s also got state of the art science labs and equipment that Sam would kill to get his hands on. That Sam apparently  _will_  get his hands on.

Pike laughs again and it’s not exactly unkind, but it still gets under Sam’s skin. “You’re drooling, Lieutenant Commander,” he says, setting the shuttle on autopilot and unbuckling his safety harness. “I’m going to go check on this drunk cadet of yours, see if I can’t talk some sense into him before we land.”

“If anybody could talk a man into sobriety, it would be you, Captain,” Sam says, giving the man the cheekiest grin he can manage. “Just follow the scent of cheap alcohol and you should be able to pick him out of the crowd with no problem.”

“You’re just jealous you don’t have the nose of a bloodhound, kid,” Pike says, ducking through the cockpit door before Sam can come up with a suitably witty retort, leaving him alone with the autopilot and not a lot to do.

 _Enterprise_ , huh? As much as Sam’s dreamed about being assigned to the flagship, he’d never actually thought he’d make it to that point, but if Pike’s to be trusted, that’s where he’ll be in a little under four years when she’s completed, if the engineering estimates are to be believed. He can’t imagine he’ll have any sort of authority in the command structure, but if he’s lucky, maybe he’ll have his own lab and a couple of people under him.

He’ll have to remember to call Gram later, let her know the good news. She’ll probably just tell him not to count his chickens before they’re hatched, to wait for his official assignment before thinking about his imaginary staff, but it’s too exciting not to. It’s  _Enterprise_ ; that’s like telling a kid that they get two Christmases this year.

He wonders if his parents would be proud. He likes to think they would, but how the hell would he know? It’s not like he has any memories of his own of them; everything he knows has come from Gram or vids or old Academy publications. The sum total of his knowledge of his parents wouldn’t add up to more than a couple thousand of words if he wrote it down.

But that doesn’t matter. They were his parents. They’d be proud of him if they were still alive. They would.

Who wouldn’t be proud of their son being assigned to the flagship?

  
\------

Ayel comes to her not long after returning from the Klingon outpost, a fresh scar bisecting his cheek and curving down and around his jaw. It was a terrible wound, steadily seeping blood, when he appeared on the transporter pad next to James, and it’s an equally terrible looking scar. 

“I wish to speak with you,” he says, striding into her lab like he owns it, not even bothering to announce his presence beforehand. Winona turns in her seat and watches him prowl the space like a caged animal.

“About what?” Winona asks, folding her hands in her lap. She eyes the corner of the room where she’s learned the surveillance camera is concealed, wonders if anyone is monitoring her today. For Ayel’s sake, she hopes not.

“Your son’s incompetence almost got me killed,” Ayel says, finally stilling and facing Winona. “It was almost as if he was trying to get me killed.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Winona says and it’s not a lie. She doesn’t  _know_ , she only  _suspects_ , that Nero, and James by extension, is working towards a future without Ayel in it.

“Do not lie to me,” Ayel growls and he’s across the room in an instant, his face bare inches from Winona’s, his hands on the arms of her chair, bracketing her in her seat. His eyes bore into her, cutting straight to her soul.

“I have no proof,” Winona says, her voice a whisper. She feels her breath warming the increasingly small space between their mouths and her stomach knots in anticipation. “If I did, don’t you think I would tell you what I know?”

“I do not know what to think,” Ayel says, his voice as quiet as hers. Winona has never been as aware of Ayel’s mouth as she is now, her eyes drawn to his lips almost against her will. “You are not unaware of me, yet you remain with the captain.”

“What else should I do?” Winona asks, anger spiking in her gut, drags her eyes up to meet Ayel’s gaze. “He could have killed me hundreds of times over and he hasn’t. I live only at his discretion, as does my son. As do you. You suggest I should betray him and get us all killed?”

“No,” Ayel says. He sounds frustrated and angry and… defeated? It is not an emotion Winona is used to associating with Ayel and she finds herself disquieted, though her anger remains.

“Then what?” she asks, perhaps a tad harshly. “What would you have me do?”

“I do not know,” Ayel admits, finally pulling away, but only far enough that they are no longer sharing the same breath when they speak. Winona feels momentarily bereft at the loss before she pushes the feeling aside.

“I belong to Nero,” Winona says, voicing the thought for the first time aloud. She’s known it for years and the most recent bruises from Nero driving that point home have only just healed, but she’s never said it before. It’s freeing to say, so she repeats it. “I belong to Nero and nothing either of us do will change that. It’s best to accept it and move on with our lives, Ayel.”

The door to the lab slides open again and Winona glances over Ayel’s shoulder to see her son, disruptor in hand, eyes angry, stride into the room. So she is being monitored today, apparently by James. He’s quick; Ayel doesn’t even have a chance to turn around before James has brought the butt of his weapon down against the back of Ayel’s head, knocking him to his knees, calling out, “Step away from my mother.”

Winona jumps up and backs as far away as she can get as Ayel pulls himself to his feet and faces James. She wants to look away from what she knows is coming, but she can’t. She needs to witness this, needs to see the end of this.

“I wondered if you would be man enough to do the deed yourself,” Ayel says, his tone almost conversational, “or if you would rely on Klingons to do it for you.”

“I could have killed you at any time,” James says, his tone nowhere near conversational, “but Father insisted that you were still useful.”

“And now?” Ayel asks, his right hand twitching towards the disruptor holstered at his side. Winona resists the urge to draw her dagger; she doesn’t know, at this point, whose side she would be on and that alone is enough to stay her hand.

“The trouble you cause has finally outweighed your usefulness,” James says, his voice steady.

Ayel is fast, but James is faster. Before Ayel even manages to get his disruptor out of its holster, James has snapped off two shots, the first hitting Ayel in the throat and the second catching him in the chest.

Ayel falls to the floor, slumped on his side, smoke rising from the disruptor wounds. Winona meets James’s eyes over the body, feeling chilled to the core when James’s cold eyes, so like and unlike those she loved so long ago, lock onto hers.

“If you’re going to kill me, I suggest you do it now,” Winona says, her voice firm, despite how wildly her stomach is jumping with uncertainty.

“You are lucky that your skills are irreplaceable and that Father prefers your company to that of any of the other women on board,” James says, holstering his weapon. He toes at Ayel’s body, nudging it till Winona can see Ayel’s dead eyes staring at the ceiling.

“Now get back to work.”

  
\------

  
The first time Sam sees Leonard McCoy outside of a recruitment shuttle, he doesn’t recognize him. He’s cleaned up, sobered up, and wearing the cadet uniform, sitting in the front row of the auditorium where Sam teaches Introductory Terran Biology.

“Are you in the right room?” Sam asks him as cadets file in around them, talking softly and settling into their seats. This cadet is older, probably a post-grad, pulled into Starfleet like Sam was, and Sam has no doubt that this man has no need to be taking this course.

“Yeah, I am,” the man says, standing. He’s just barely taller than Sam and Sam’s starting to get the idea that he’s met this guy before. He looks awfully familiar. “I’m your new TA.”

“You’re McCoy?”

“Leonard McCoy,” the man confirms, holding out a hand. They shake and Sam remembers where he’s seen this guy before. He was the drunk on the recruitment shuttle two terms ago, the one Sam filed a disciplinary report against. He’s definitely cleaned himself up, from what Sam can tell. 

“Are you free after class to discuss the upcoming term?” Sam asks, hoping McCoy won’t hold the demerit against him. They need to talk about McCoy’s responsibilities as TA and Sam needs to know that this guy’s actually okay to be in charge of a hundred odd cadets on the rare occasion when Sam will be unavailable to teach. It’s not really as if Sam’s first impression of the man was complimentary, after all.

It turns out Sam needn’t have worried. McCoy’s smart and doesn’t take shit from anyone, even superior officers, which gets him in a fair bit of trouble, but nothing too serious. He’s got a biting sense of humor that Sam finds himself drawn to and he’s a seriously good doctor, good enough that the brass is abuzz about his research and treatment methods.

And, Sam finds, he’s a good friend. They have lunch together occasionally and Len drops by Sam’s office after exams to help him mark them. They go out to the bars once or twice a month and Sam always wakes up with a hangover that gets swiftly hypoed away the morning after.

They make it through the semester with no problem and go their separate ways over the holiday break. Sam heads up to Sacramento to do the family Christmas thing and, as far as Sam is aware, Len heads back to Georgia.

Sam leaves Sacramento on the second, same as he’s done since he started college. Gram’s the only one who understands why, though. Libby and her family just think it’s because Sam’s sick of being home and ready to get back to class, but they don’t remember that Sam’s entire family died on the fourth and that Sam functions best if he’s left alone to mourn. Gram’s always understood and she’s the only one whose opinion matters, so Sam doesn’t give it too much thought.

He plans on spending the fourth the same he has always has, holed up in a reading nook in the library with an actual bound book, followed by getting absolutely shitfaced in the privacy of his quarters later on in the evening.

That all changes when on his way to the library, he runs into Len on the quad, Len who’s dressed in civvies and stumbling slightly despite the fact it’s not even lunchtime yet.

“Jesus, Len, what’s going on?” Sam asks, grabbing him by the arm and steering his towards the faculty quarters, which are closer than the graduate barracks on the other side of campus. “You looking to rack up another demerit for inappropriate conduct?”

Len doesn’t answer, but he does allow himself to be led and soon enough he’s tripping over the threshold of Sam’s quarters and plopping bonelessly onto the couch. Sam pours two glasses of water before joining him.

“You gonna tell me why you’re drunk at ten o’clock in the morning?” Sam asks, handing Len one of the glasses. “Because I’m really not in the mood to be playing guessing games today.”

Len takes a long gulp from his glass, balances it on his knee. “Went to Georgia. Saw my ex. It didn’t go well.”

Sam knows Len’s spoken to his ex since the divorce and it’s always left him surlier than normal, but it’s never gotten under his skin like this. There’s something else going on and Sam is bound and determined to find out what; aside from helping Len out, it has the added benefit of distracting Sam from his own issues of the day, which is an added bonus.

“And what was so different about this time that’s got you so messed up?” Sam asks, well aware he’s being anything but tactful, but Len’s a direct sort of guy and, if he was sober, Sam’s sure he’d appreciate the direct approach here.

“We went and saw Jo,” Len says, fidgeting with his glass.

“Who’s Jo?” Sam asks, wishing Len would look at him.

“I’m not drunk enough for this,” Len mutters, standing and heading for the kitchen. Sam just watches him go, listens to him rummaging through cabinets and collecting glasses. He’s back a minute later, cradling two tumblers in one broad palm, his other hand wrapped around the neck of an unopened fifth of JD. 

Sam lets him pour them both a drink before asking again, “Who’s Jo?”

Len knocks back his drink like a pro and pours himself another before answering, his voice hoarse. “She was our daughter. Beautiful. Smart.” He smiles, but it’s tinged with more than a little sadness and anger. “She got sick and I spent the better part of a year trying to help her, trying to figure out just the right treatment to make her better.”

“What happened?” Sam asks, already knowing the answer. He’s not doing this for himself anymore, though. Len needs to get this out and Sam will sit here and listen and prompt him when necessary because this is hurting Len and Sam hates to see Len hurt.

“She died, almost two years ago now,” Len says after a long moment of silence and several deep breaths. “Joss and I got divorced not long after that and then I joined up and here we are today.”

“God, Len, I’m so sorry,” Sam says for lack of anything better to say. It may be an overused phrase that very rarely actually helps, but he means it and he hopes Len can hear his sincerity. 

“Thanks,” Len says, holding up his glass. Sam clinks his glass against Len’s and they both drink.

They drink in silence for a long while, but it’s not uncomfortable. Sam’s well on his way to comfortably tipsy when he says, “You know, my whole family died when I was just a kid. Today’s the anniversary.”

“What happened?”

“They were on the  _Kelvin_ ,” Sam says, staring into his glass. “Dad was the first officer and Mom was a physicist in one of the science labs. The ship was destroyed by Romulans. No one survived.” He doesn’t mention the baby that Mom was carrying and he doesn’t really know why. No one else alive but Gram and the Starfleet database containing Mom’s request for maternity leave know that she was pregnant and Sam just wants to keep that bit of it private. The rest of his family’s tragic past is public record and he just wants this tiniest little bit for himself.

Len doesn’t say anything, just splashes more whisky into Sam’s glass. 

At some point, he must fall asleep because he wakes up with the setting sun shining through his living room window and onto his face. He’s slumped sideways, his head against Len’s shoulder. Len’s hand is warm against Sam’s knee. 

Sam pushes himself upright, dislodging Len’s hand. He stretches his neck and back, trying to work out the kinks in his muscles, before standing and managing to get Len lying down on the couch before he stumbles his way into his bedroom to collapse onto his bed and pass out again, still dressed.

When he wakes up in the morning, his head is splitting apart, his mouth tastes like ass, and Len is gone. He uses a hypo pulled from his medicine cabinet (originally left there by Len for mornings like today) and brushes his teeth three times before he starts to feel human again. A shower and change of clothes later and he actually does feel human again.

There’s a note on his kitchen table, just one word in Len’s messy chicken scrawl.

“You’re welcome,” Sam tells the note before he gets to work fixing himself some breakfast.

  
\------

  
Winona’s heart is in her throat as the  _Narada_  maneuvers into position ten thousand kilometers from where her calculations predict Ambassador Spock’s ship will appear. The location came much easier than the time, which proved impossible to pin down to anything smaller than a thirty-eight hour window. They’re already six hours into that window, but sensors haven’t picked up the telltale energy signature that should be emitted when Spock appears, the same energy signature that lured the  _Kelvin_  to where the  _Narada_ appeared twenty-five years ago.

If Winona’s right, if she’s managed to properly interpret the data, they will be able to save Romulus from destruction. Nero and his crew will have their revenge. George’s death won’t have been in vain. She doesn’t know anymore which of those two is more important to her.

If she’s wrong, though, there will be no second chances for her to prove herself. Nero won’t hesitate to kill her himself, but he also won’t hesitate to test James’s loyalty by ordering him to kill his own mother.

Winona glances at James from the corner of her eye. He has half a dozen visible weapons on his body and she knows that there are probably another half dozen hidden in his clothing. Then there are his hands, large and strong, hands that have snapped necks and throttled the life out of men.

Oh, James is more than capable of killing Winona, would probably be more than willing to do so if it pleased the man he called father.

 _Please let me be right,_  Winona thinks, unsure who exactly the entreaty is directed to, if she’s praying to a god she’s never believed in or if she’s just wishing fruitlessly.

“We are in position, Captain,” the helmsman calls out, looking over his shoulder at Nero seated in the command chair with James at one shoulder and Winona at the other.

“Good,” he says and Winona sees his hands tightening around the arms of his chair. He is on a hair trigger, Winona knows, primed for a fight that may never come. “Monitor the area for any sign of Spock.”

“Yes, sir,” echoes out from nearly every station. Winona’s fingers itch to push aside the man at the sensor station and run through the scans herself. She knows Ralic is the best sensor officer they have, but he doesn’t know the sensor data like Winona does, no one knows the sensor data like Winona does, and it is her life on the line. 

She’s right, she knows she’s right, but the waiting is unbearable. Still, she remains at Nero’s side, in the place she’s spent decades carving out for herself in the command hierarchy, and awaits her fate.

She wonders if this is how Ayel felt those last few days and weeks before he was no longer useful to Nero.

Time passes so incredibly slowly and Winona vows to avoid looking at the chrono displayed in the corner of the main screen, after a painfully slow hour crawls by. After a while, James takes out a knife and starts sharpening a blade that is mostly likely already surgically sharp. Winona fights the urge to fidget like a child.

“Captain, sensors are detecting an anomaly approximately thirteen thousand kilometers dead ahead!”

Winona abandons her post and hurries to the sensor station, leaning over Ralic’s shoulder. She’s been studying the data from the  _Narada_ ’s arrival for fifteen years, knows the sensor readings like the back of her hand. She would recognize this as Ambassador Spock’s long-awaited appearance in her sleep.

“It’s him,” is all she says, though, boldly meeting Nero’s eye. He’s proud of her for being right, she can see that plainly in his gaze, but she can also see that he’s disappointed that he’s now short an excuse to have her killed.

“Bring his ship aboard,” Nero orders. “Winona, James, with me.” He fairly springs from his seat and heads for the lift, James following obediently at his heel. Winona struggles to keep up with their longer strides without appearing as if she’s rushing. It’s surprisingly difficult to do.

The three of them travel a reverse of the path Winona took when she was first brought aboard. She misses Ayel with a sudden ferocity that is so surprising she almost stumbles on the threshold of the lift. Even then, even when she’d been terrified and exhausted and he’d been one of the men that had taken George from her, he’d been as kind to her as he ever was and she  _misses_  that, misses  _him_  more now than she’s missed George these past few years.

She wonders if she’d realized she loved Ayel before his death that, maybe, things might have been different. As soon as she’s thought it, she ruthlessly pushes that idea from her mind; the appearance of the  _Narada_  twenty-five years ago proved that the past is not immutable, but Winona is not lucky enough to be granted a do-over. This is her life and no amount of wishing will change that.

So she does what she’s always done; she follows orders and does her best to survive. Now, that means following Nero and James down labyrinthine corridors and back towards a place Winona hasn’t been since the day James was born.

The first thing Winona notices upon entering the landing bay is that her old shuttle is gone and in its place is a beautiful ship, all graceful Vulcan lines and big, open viewports. After a long moment, a ramp descends from its belly and an ancient-looking Vulcan steps down and onto the deck.

“Spock,” Nero says in Standard, the language sounding strange and harsh to Winona’s ear after all these years of speaking nothing but Romulan. Nero steps forward, his hand wrapped around the hilt of his dagger. “Twenty-five years is too long a time and yet too short a time to devise a way to make you suffer the way I have.”

“Twenty-five years?” Spock repeats and Winona can’t help but analyze his voice, so different from what she’s used to. It’s deep and grave, each word spoken precisely with so little an accent as to be unnoticeable, so similar to Nero’s own barely-there accent. 

Nero turns to Winona and says, “Explain to Spock about the temporal displacement.” It is not a request. 

Winona steps forward until she is at Nero’s side. Spock’s eyes widen when they meet hers; his gaze flickers towards Nero and James before coming back to rest on her. His eyes bore into her; it’s disconcerting, like he’s looking right into her, shaking her straight to her core.

She clears her throat, fighting with every word to keep her voice steady. “When the  _Narada_  was pulled through the singularity, it underwent severe temporal and spatial displacement, arriving in the year 2233 in an uninhabited star system on the Federation side of the neutral zone.”

Spock’s eyes flicker back around the circuit of those present, lingering on James for a moment longer than either Winona or Nero.

“I believe the presence of the red matter in your own ship interacted with the singularity on a molecular level, keeping you from appearing for an addition twenty-five years,” Winona continues, folding her hands together behind her back to keep from fidgeting.

“You are Winona Kirk,” Spock eventually says after a long moment of silence, his dark eyes finally still and focused on her.

Winona nods, unsure if a reply is really necessary.

Spock’s gaze shifts to James and he says, “I fear my failure to save Romulus may have doomed us all.”

“You doomed only yourself,” Nero says, his tone strange, full of pride, anger, triumph, and a dozen other emotions Winona doesn’t know how to put into words. Spock’s eyes snap back to Nero and Winona watches, fascinated, as they stare each other down. The stand-off ends with Nero uttering one word. “James.”

Winona watches her son step right up to Spock and lay a hand on his shoulder before pulling his dagger and plunging it deep into Spock’s gut and, Winona is sure, straight through his heart. Green blood spills out over James’s hand and stains the deck below their feet. James pulls out his dagger and shoves Spock’s body away. There’s a wet thump as the body hits the deck.

“And now we will have our revenge,” Nero says, stepping around Spock’s body and striding into the Vulcan ship. James follows immediately. Winona’s eyes linger on Spock for only a moment before she, too, follows.

  
\------

Sam’s comm beeps the two-three-two emergency signal that’s used only by the Admiralty and every head in the auditorium snaps up from their exams, a hundred sets of eyes landing on Sam all at once. Sam scoops his comm up and flips it open, reading the short message on the display screen three times before he’s fully able to comprehend it.

“I need everyone to submit your exams, whether you’re done or not,” Sam says, standing and gathering together his PADDs. “You’ll get the opportunity to finish later, but for now, you’ve been called up to fill in the new fleet for a rescue mission to Vulcan. All cadets, first class, are to report to the main hangar bay to receive their assignments. Dismissed.”

Sam sticks around only long enough to verify that all the exams have been submitted and then he’s making his own way to the hangar bay, cutting through building after building to avoid the mass of cadets swarming every available walkway. He only realizes after he’s reached the hangar bay that he’s still carrying his bag, but it’s too late to dump it at his quarters. It’ll just have to make the trip up to  _Enterprise_ , too. 

He’s making his way towards  _Enterprise_ ’s shuttles when he literally runs into Len, who’s headed in the opposite direction.

“Hey, where are you going?” Sam asks, steadying Len with a hand on his arm, his touch lingering for longer than is strictly necessary. “Our ride’s over there.”

“My assignment’s been changed,” Len growls, but, surprisingly, doesn’t shrug off Sam’s hold on him. “ _Antares_  instead of  _Enterprise_.”

“Why?” Sam asks. Len’s been fast-tracked for assignment to  _Enterprise_  almost since he got to the Academy, though Sam’s heard that the Medical Admiralty fought pretty hard to keep Len on  _terra firma_  and close at hand as their own personal physician.

“Hell if I know,” Len says, throwing his hands up in frustration and Sam lets his hand fall, not willing to get accidentally slapped in the face just to try to keep Len calm with his touch. “If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it’s probably got something to do with getting written up for insubordination after calling Admiral Ogawa a thick-headed moron without the good sense god gave a flea.”

 _Ah,_  Sam thinks, remembers Len telling him about that a few weeks ago. He’d thought Len would have months to make up for that gaffe with good marks and a clean slate before shipping out at the end of the year, but then Vulcan called for aid and now Len’s stuck with that incident fresh in everyone’s mind. Lucky for Len, he doesn’t have to stay stuck.

“Come with me,” Sam says before taking off for the closest computer terminal, Len following right on his heel. A few quick taps to the screen and Sam’s in the fleet register and reassigning Len to  _Enterprise_ , where he belongs. Sam’ll probably have to answer for this later, but for now, everyone’s hopefully too busy to notice. “Let’s go.”

“Why’d you do that?” Len asks once they’ve pushed through the crowd of milling cadets and have been cleared for an  _Enterprise_ -bound shuttle.

Sam straps himself into his seat before he answers. “You deserve to be on  _Enterprise_ , whether it’s just a rescue mission or a permanent assignment. It’s not your fault that you tend to speak you mind, for good or bad, no matter who you’re addressing. Who knew Ogawa didn’t have a sense of humor? Besides, how am I supposed to get my daily allowance of snark if you’re on a different ship?”

Len doesn’t answer, but he does bump his shoulder to Sam’s and Sam chooses to read that as the gratitude that Len can’t bring himself to speak. The ride to the ship is made in silence after that, Len’s eyes firmly on the seatback in front of him, Sam’s eyes drawn to the fleet docked at SF High. The ships are gorgeous, all of them, but Sam can’t help but fixate a little on  _Enterprise_. It’s been years since he’s seen her in person, years since she was towed from her perch in Iowa and into orbit and she’s even more beautiful now, all sleek likes and smooth curves. 

All too soon, their shuttle pushes through the forcefield keeping the docking bay pressurized and sets down with a small thump and then it’s time to disembark and go their separate ways.

“Try not to get into too much trouble,” Sam says with a smile and a hand on Len’s shoulder. “And for god’s sake, pretend that you were originally assigned here. I am not at all prepared to deal with that little breach of protocol just yet.”

“Get outta here and go do your job,” Len says, shoving at Sam and turning away. Sam watches him go, hoping he did the right thing getting Len onboard, hoping Len’ll be all right.

Sam shakes his head; of course Len’ll be all right. Sickbay’s not dangerous. Sam almost wants to laugh at himself for being so ridiculous, but he just heads off to change into his uniform and report to his science lab. He’s not sure that his particular skill set will be needed on this mission, but he’ll help in any way he can.

He downloads a copy of the original distress call and all the recent sensor data that’s available about Vulcan space to his personal PADD to study; maybe he can come up with some insight that’ll help them figure out what exactly they need to do, whether they need to evacuate or not.

He’s straightening his hair after pulling his blue tunic over his head when his eyes land on the phrase ‘lightning storm in space’ and his mind jumps to the reports about the destruction of the  _Kelvin_. He pages through the directory on his PADD until he finds Captain Pike’s dissertation, the copy Sam’s annotated with linked footnotes to the original source material, knowing exactly what he’s going to find, but needing the corroborating evidence anyway.

 _There._

 _Captain Robau ordered a change in course to investigate a sensor anomaly, what Commander Kirk called ‘a lightning storm in space’ in his live comm report to Starfleet Command._

It’s that ship, that Romulan ship that killed his family. It’s out there and it’s attacking Vulcan, Sam’s sure of it. And he’s got proof. It’s flimsy and circumstantial, but it might be enough to talk Captain Pike into going into Vulcan space on the lookout. He can’t do it alone, though.

Sam flips open his communicator as he exits his quarters, his PADD tucked under his arm. “Kirk to McCoy.”

“McCoy here,” Len answers after a moment, his voice tinny.

“The ship that destroyed the  _Kelvin_  is attacking Vulcan and I can prove it,” Sam says, waiting impatiently for the lift. “I need you to meet me on the bridge and back me up.”

“Are you sure, Sam?” Len asks and he sounds rushed and worried. Sam can imagine all too well how Len must look right now, eyebrows drawn together in a scowl, lips pursed as his hyperactive brain speeds through all the available information. “Are you absolutely sure?”

“Yes.” Sam tries to put as much certainty into that one syllable as he can and it must come through because Len says, “I’ll be there in two minutes. McCoy out.”

Sam snaps his comm closed and slips it onto his belt, hoping like hell that Captain Pike will believe him.

  
\------

  
Winona watches the drill descend into Vulcan’s atmosphere from her post at the sensor station. It’s beautiful in its own way, all jagged lines full of purpose, hanging thousands of meters above the surface of the planet. 

She knows the Vulcans got off a distress call before their communications were blocked, so it’s only a matter of time before Starfleet appears. The sensors are set to scan specifically for Starfleet warp signatures, but Winona keeps a weather eye on her monitors anyway, ready to warn Nero at the first hint of enemy ships.

“The platform is in position, Captain.”

“Begin drilling,” Nero orders from his spot reclined in the command chair. James stands at his side, hands folded behind his back, eyes darting from monitor to monitor. Winona watches him for a moment before turning back to her own monitors. Nothing.

No. Wait.

There’s something, at the edge of the system, moving fast.

“Incoming ships!” Winona calls out even as she refines the sensor resolution to try to get as much detail on them as possible. “Seven ships, ‘Fleet warp signatures.”

“Fire everything!” Nero snaps, pressing his fist to the arm of his chair. “Destroy them all!”

A chorus of affirmatives follows the orders and Winona watches the ships drop from warp and break apart under the sudden onslaught of weapon’s fire from the  _Narada_. The first four ships don’t even get a shot off. The fifth ship manages to fire, but the torpedo spread misses the  _Narada_  by several thousand kilometers. The sixth ship scores a handful of phaser hits against the  _Narada_ ’s hull before it’s destroyed. 

The final ship,  _U.S.S. Farragut_  displayed proudly on its saucer section, begins a suicide run and Winona’s taken back twenty-five year, to the last ship that made a suicide run on the  _Narada_. She remembers the fear and the pain and George’s voice over the comm and then she blinks and she’s back at her station on the bridge of the  _Narada_ , watching the  _Farragut_  get taken apart by their missiles.

Winona is about to call the all clear when the sensors pick up another incoming ‘Fleet ship, lagging behind the main bulk of the fleet.

“Captain, there’s another incoming ship!” Winona calls and watches the ship drop from warp a bare few seconds later and immediately begin maneuvering through the debris, all that’s left of her sister ships.

Nero doesn’t even have to give the order to fire before torpedoes are lancing towards the ship. Winona focuses exterior cameras on the enemy ship and counts the hull breaches, watches bodies fly out into open space. It’s beautiful, if you can forget that they were once people just doing their jobs. But so are those on the  _Narada_ ; they’re just trying to save their homeworld, their families, and they will let nothing get in their way and if that means death and destruction on a galactic scale, then so be it. 

“Wait!” Nero is out of his seat and standing behind Winona before she’s even aware he’s moved, his finger stabbing at the ship on the main sensor screen in front of her. “Magnify the hull.”

The weapon’s fire tapers off as Winona magnifies the saucer section of the ‘Fleet ship until the words  _U.S.S. Enterprise_  fill the screen.  _Enterprise_  has always been the flagship of the fleet, Winona knows, all the way back to the days of the old NX class. So why was this  _Enterprise_  lagging behind the rest of the fleet?

“Hail them,” Nero orders, striding across the bridge to stand at the comm station. Winona turns in her chair and meets James’s eye. He shakes his head and remains next to the command chair; there is no need to reveal their presence to the enemy.

Winona keys a command into her board, pulling up the comm feed on her secondary monitor. The screen resolves into the image of the bridge of the other ship, bright, sleek, full of young officers. The captain, a man similar in age to Winona, stands and says, “I’m Captain Christopher Pike. To whom am I speaking?”

“I am Nero, captain of this ship.”

“Captain Nero, your actions constitute a declaration of war against the Federation,” Pike says, his voice firm. “Withdraw and I will agree to arrange a conference between Romulan and Federation leadership at a neutral location.”

“I do not speak for the Empire,” Nero says and Winona watches Pike’s eyes widen. He obviously hadn’t been expecting to hear that. “We stand apart, as does your Vulcan crewmember. Isn’t that right, Spock?”

It’s only by sheer force of will that Winona doesn’t gasp, her eyes snapping to the man in science blues coming around to stand next to his captain. So this is Spock. For the first time, it truly hits her how far out of time Nero is. This Spock is young, not much older than James, while the Spock whose body was jettisoned into space just days ago was ancient, old even for a Vulcan.

“Pardon me, but I do not believe that you and I are acquainted,” Spock says. His voice isn’t as deep as the other Spock’s, but the precisely spoken, almost clipped speech is the same.

“No, we’re not,” Nero replies, his tone strange. When Winona glances over at him, she sees that his expression matches his tone, something in between a smile and a grimace. “Not yet.” He pauses for a moment and Winona imagines him glancing between Spock and Pike, trying to decide how much to say. “Captain Pike, your transporter has been disabled. As you can see from the rest of your armada, you have no choice. You will man a shuttle and come aboard the  _Narada_  for negotiations. That is all.”

The screen goes dark as the connection is cut. Nero pivots on his heel to face James and says, “Prepare the red matter.”

“Yes, sir.” James nods and strides from the bridge. Winona watches him go before turning her eyes to Nero.

“You will accompany me,” Nero tells her. Winona doesn’t bother to reply, just rises and follows Nero to the lift at the back of the bridge. They travel in silence to the forward docking bay, but Nero stops before they enter. He opens a storage locker next to the door, drawing out a disruptor and handing it to Winona before arming himself. Winona secures the holster belt around her waist and slips the gun into place before meeting Nero’s eye. He nods and she returns the gesture; she is on his side and will have his back, no matter what Pike has to say. 

They step into the docking bay and Winona is almost relieved to see that Starfleet shuttle design hasn’t visibly changed during her time on the  _Narada_. It’s one more link to her past, but less intrusive than her memories and is more easily pushed to the side.

The shuttle settles onto the deck with a slight bump. A minute later, a ramp descends and Pike comes striding down, his hands held out from his sides, clearly unarmed. Winona keeps a hand on her disruptor all the same.

“Captain Nero,” Pike says, shifting his gaze between Nero and Winona, lingering on Winona for longer and longer each time he glances her way. “May I ask who your companion is?”

Winona can see Nero nod and smirk from the corner of her eye and she’s almost tempted to mirror the expression. She doesn’t wait for Nero to introduce her, just says, “I am Winona Kirk, the captain’s advisor.” She could add to that, say that she belongs to Nero, has occasionally warmed his bed for more than a decade, that she is the one who allowed for them all to be here when she discovered when and where Spock would appear, but she says none of that. 

“Kirk?” Pike repeats, looking Winona up and down. There’s nothing remotely sexual about the look; he’s studying her, trying to fit her into a mold and she can see the second he decides that she fits. “From the  _Kelvin_? Everyone thought you’d died. Your son, Sam, he thought--”

Pike’s sudden outpouring of words stops when Winona slams the butt of her pistol against the side of his head. He falls to the deck, unconscious. 

Nero grabs a hold of Winona’s arm and she wheels around to face him. “That was unnecessary,” he growls, shaking her. “I was going to begin questioning him immediately.”

Winona jerks her arm from Nero’s grasp and reholsters her disruptor. “He had no right to mention my son,” she snaps, right in Nero’s face. “Now he will know better for the future.”

“Have him taken to the chamber that’s been prepared,” Nero orders. Winona sees his fingers twitch and knows he’s only barely holding himself back from striking her. If he didn’t need her to carry out his orders right this minute, she has no doubt she would already have burgeoning bruises on her face. “I will be on the bridge. Inform me when he wakes.”

“Of course,” Winona says to his back, not bothering to conceal her smirk.

It isn’t until she checks the sensor logs after securing Pike to the table in the interrogation chamber that Winona realizes that while she was arguing with Nero, Vulcan was being pulled into a black hole. The very fabric of the Federation changed and she was completely unaware until after the fact.

If that doesn’t speak to the lack of importance of the Federation, then Winona doesn’t know what does.

  
\------

  
Sam watches Vulcan get pulled into the singularity from his spot in the captain’s chair in the middle of the bridge. It’s a terrible and beautiful sight and Sam can’t even pretend to understand how this is going to affect the survivors. 

Speaking of… He stabs at the comm button built into the arm of the chair and says, “Bridge to Transporter Room. Status.”

Ensign Chekov answers, his accent thicker than it was earlier. “The away team, Captain Spock, and five Vulcan elders made it safely back to the ship. They are headed to Sickbay now.”

Sam can’t help but ask, “And what of Spock’s mother?”

“I lost her, sir,” Chekov answers and Sam hears Uhura, at her station to Sam’s right, gasp and he curses himself for making this call in the middle of the bridge. “She’s gone.”

“Report back to the bridge as soon as possible, Ensign,” he says instead of what he really wants to say. He wants to tell the kid that it’s not his fault, that no one could have saved her, but he doesn’t know that. He wasn’t there, he hasn’t reviewed the transporter logs, doesn’t have the background to make that call, and he won’t tell Chekov it’s not his fault until he  _knows_  it wasn’t Chekov’s fault. 

Chekov enters the bridge a few minutes later and taps out his relief. He keeps his eyes on his console, head bowed, and Sam wouldn’t be surprised if he was studying the logs right now, trying to find out where everything went wrong. It’s what Sam would do if he were in the kid’s place.

A little while later, when the ship’s passing by Delta Vega on the way out of the system, Spock appears on the bridge, followed by Sulu and Len. Sam relinquishes his seat, but doesn’t move to the main science station immediately. He catches Len’s eye, sees the warning there, but doesn’t heed it. He can’t, not if they’re going to do something about Nero.

“What is the status of the  _Narada_?” Spock asks. The bridge is silent for long moments.

It’s Uhura who finally answers, “Telemetry suggests that Nero is headed for Earth.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Spock says, his voice bland. Sam knows better and can see how hard Spock’s working at maintaining his mask of indifference. Sam can’t even imagine what Spock must be feeling right now.

“Are we going to follow him?” Sam asks, speaking the question he knows everyone on the bridge is thinking. 

“No,” Spock says, ignoring the murmurs his answer brings. “We are going to join the rest of the fleet in the Laurentian system before we engage Nero again.”

Sam steps up next to the command chair and when he speaks next, his voice is quiet enough that only Spock can hear him. “That’s a mistake and you know it, Spock.” He can see Len eyeing him warily, obviously wondering what it is Sam’s up to. Sam ignores him as best he can, keeps his attention on Spock. “By the time we gather our ships and get to Earth, Earth will be gone.”

“I will not risk this ship in an uneven confrontation,” Spock replies, just as quietly, his eyes forward, not even bothering to look at Sam.

“I know you won’t,” Sam says, “but I will.” Spock’s head whips up at this and Sam meets his eye and puts as much conviction into his voice as he can. “It’s what needs to happen, whether you can give the order or not.”

“What do you suggest then, Commander?” Spock asks, his voice a little louder now. Every eye on the bridge is on them. Sam considers his reply carefully before answering.

“I believe you are emotionally compromised by the events on Vulcan and therefore unable to lead this mission to a successful conclusion,” Sam says clearly and loudly enough to be heard by everyone present. He meets Len’s eye and hopes Len understands why he’s doing this and will back him up; Sam can’t do this without him.

Spock levers himself out of the command chair, coming toe-to-toe with Sam. “I am able to lead this ship, Mister Kirk. The fact that I am unwilling to commit to a rash course of action does not make me emotionally compromised.”

“With all due respect, Spock, you just lost your mother,” Sam says, not backing down one inch in the face of Spock’s ever more visible anger. “You just lost your  _entire world_. You are not okay to be in charge right now.”

“As acting CMO, I agree with Commander Kirk’s assessment,” Len suddenly pipes up, right at Sam’s shoulder and Sam feels some of the tension bleed out of him at Len’s voice. “I will remove you from duty if I have to, but I hope it won’t come to that, sir.”

Everything is silent for a long moment, so long Sam’s beginning to wonder if Len actually will have to remove Spock from command, but then Spock’s shoulders slump just the slightest bit and he says, “Doctor McCoy, pursuant to Starfleet Regulation 619, I am removing myself from command. Please make note of it in the ship’s logs.”

“I need you with me on this, Spock,” Sam says, not backing down despite his win. “I need you to have my back.”

“I will help you in whatever way I can,” Spock replies, inclining his head in a slight nod. Sam smiles, and claps Spock’s shoulder.

“So what’s your plan, then, Sam?” Len asks and looking around, Sam realizes that Len’s just spoken the thought that’s on everyone’s mind.

“We’re going to get Captain Pike back,” Sam says, sitting down in the captain’s chair. “Sulu, I want us on their trail ten minutes ago, as fast as we can go. I want engineering teams working on our engine output. And I want a plan for how we’re going to get aboard the  _Narada_ , get Captain Pike, and come back alive. Any and all contributions are welcome.”

“I have thoughts about that, sir,” Chekov says, twirling a stylus absently in his fingers. “I must run some calculations first, but I believe my idea might work.”

“Care to share with the rest of the class?” Len asks, sarcasm so thick it’s a wonder he doesn’t choke on it.

“Not until I am sure, no,” Chekov says, hardly paying attention to those around him, already at the board next to Communications. “I will tell you when I am done.”

“All right, then,” Sam says, clapping his hands against the arms of the chair. “Anybody else?” No one else speaks up and after a long moment of being stared at by the senior staff, Sam sighs. “I guess we’re waiting on Chekov, then.”

Spock wanders over to stand behind Chekov, eyes intent on the kid’s calculations, while Uhura goes back to her station, ear piece firmly in place. Sulu’s still intent on the helm and coaxing every little bit of extra speed out of the engines. That leaves Len and Sam as the only ones not doing anything.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Len asks, stepping up next to Sam, his voice pitched not to carry.

“Not much of one, no,” Sam admits, looking up at the other man. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“Not so long as it doesn’t get me killed,” Len says. Sam lets out a quiet laugh. He should’ve expected an answer like that. “I gotta get back to Sickbay. You’ll let me know what the plan is?”

“As soon as I know what’s going on, you’ll know what’s going on.”

Len snorts and shakes his head before making his way to the lift. Sam watches him go and hopes they can pull this off.

  
\------

  
“This will go easier on you if you would just give up the frequencies for Starfleet’s border protection grid,” James says, his knife blade flat against the skin of Pike’s cheek, the tip digging into the flesh under Pike’s eye. 

“Don’t take his eye, James,” Winona scolds from her spot near Pike’s feet, a prime position to oversee her son’s actions. “You did promise you’d do no permanent harm.”

“I wouldn’t have to take his eye if he’d just cooperate,” James says, not bothering to even look at Winona, his tone completely conversational. Pike winces as the knife tip slips a little deeper under his skin.

“Captain, I really would recommend just giving up the codes,” Winona says, doing her best to sound long-suffering. It’s difficult when all she really wants to do is take out her knife and join in the fun with James.

Pike remains silent, eyes on the ceiling.

“I have an idea,” James says, pulling his knife away. He wipes the blade against Pike’s shirt before sheathing it. “If you won’t voluntarily tell us, we’ll just have to make you tell us.” He turns his back on Pike and sets his gaze on the cage containing the Centaurian slugs they’ve nurtured and kept alive ever since taking them from the Klingon outpost they raided years ago.

James uses a pair of tongs to lift one of the slugs from its cage and carries it over to Pike. “Centaurian slug. It will latch onto your brainstem, releasing a toxin that acts as a sort of truth serum. You will be forced to answer me then. Tell me what I want know and I won’t be forced to do this, Captain.”

Still, Pike remains silent. James sighs and says, sounding almost sad, “I warned you.” Winona watches James lean over Pike’s body and grab hold of the man’s jaw, holding his mouth open with one hand while using the other to force the wriggling slug down Pike’s throat. Once James has withdrawn the tongs, he presses on Pike’s jaw, forcing his mouth closed and his teeth together, giving him no option but to let the slug burrow its way through the back of his throat on its way to his spinal column.

Pike tries to scream, but the sound is muffled. James doesn’t let up the pressure on the other man’s jaw until Pike’s rigid body relaxes and he passes out.

“What is going on?” 

Both Winona and James jerk back from Pike’s limp body and turn to face Nero, who’s splashing across the room to stand at James’s side.

“I told you not to permanently damage him!” Nero roars, slapping James aside like he’s nothing more than a bothersome insect. “I have need of him. He’s no good to me dead!”

“He is not dead,” James says, pulling himself up to his full height, but he still has to look up to meet Nero’s eye. “He would not give up the codes, so I used the Centaurian slug. I didn’t know that he would pass out from the pain of the slug burrowing through his soft tissue.”

“Fool! He’s useless to me now!”

Time seems to slow down for Winona as she watches Nero grasp James by the throat and lift him from the floor; she can see his fingers digging into James’s neck, drawing blood, firmly cutting off James’s air.

Winona is frozen. Twenty-five years she’s spent trying to ensure her son’s survival and now she’s witness to his death at the hands of the man he’s called father his entire life and there is nothing she can do to stop it.

James scrabbles at the hand around his neck, his eyes bulging in their sockets, his feet kicking spasmodically, splashing water everywhere. Nero just lifts him higher.

James’s hands fall to his sides and his legs twitch once, twice, and then still. His eyes are open, but blank, dead, the blue chilling Winona straight to the core.

Nero tosses James’s body aside before turning to Winona. “Let that serve as a warning,” he says, his eyes are crazy as Winona’s ever seen them. “Get someone in here to clean that up.”

“What are you going to do?” Winona asks, unmoving, her eyes still locked on her son, part of her waiting for him to get up, another part of her unable to look away from the proof of her failure.

“I am going to wait for Captain Pike to wake and then I am going to get the information I need.”

  
\------

Sam is replaying all the sensor data they have on the  _Narada_ , going through every byte of information, trying to find a weakness, any weakness, when Chekov says, “Captain, I believe I know how to stop Nero.”

“How?” Sam asks, rising from his seat to join Chekov and Spock at the sensor board. Uhura steps up next to him and after a moment, Sulu joins them as well.

“If we can get close enough to the  _Narada_ , I believe I will be able to beam a small team aboard to rescue Captain Pike and sabotage the ship,” Chekov says, flicking his stylus rapidly against the board, scrolling through equation after equation faster than Sam can follow.

“Spock?”

“I concur with the Ensign’s calculations,” Spock says. “As long as the drill is not activated, the transporter should function within normal standards. If we can reach the  _Narada_ before it arrives at Earth, the drill will be a nonissue.”

“Sulu?” Sam turns to the helmsman. “Can we do that?”

Sulu plucks Chekov’s stylus right out of his fingers and runs through a few quick equations of his own on the board before answering. “Barely,” he says. “They’ve got quite the head start and we’re already pushing the engines to their limits, but we should be able to reach them somewhere between Mars and Earth orbit.”

“Good,” Sam says, running through possible plans for sabotaging the  _Narada_. “Chekov, I’m going to want you on the transporter for this. Sulu, you’re going to have the conn. Spock’s going to be with me on the rescue team.”

“It is against regulations for both the captain and first officer to be on the same away mission,” Spock says and Sam just stares at him. He’s concerned about regulations when the entire Federation is at risk of annihilation?

“I can assure you, Spock, that if we fail, you are more than welcome to bring me up in front of a disciplinary board,” Sam says, trying for a lighthearted tone and failing miserably. If they fail, they’re dead and everyone knows that. “I need you there with me, Spock.”

Spock nods his agreement and Sam breaths a little easier, knowing his ass will be as safe as can be over there.

Sam moves back to the captain’s chair and triggers the comm built into the armrest. “Bridge to Sickbay.”

“McCoy here. You figure out what you’re doing?”

“We’ve got a plan,” Sam confirms. “I need you to prepare as best you can for incoming, though. We’re catching up with the  _Narada_  and based on our last run-in with them, things aren’t going to be pretty.”

“They never are,” Len sighs and Sam imagines the put-upon martyr look Len occasionally busts out when the need arises.

“Can you be ready?”

“Of course,” Len snaps and Sam knows he’s hit a sore spot, questioning Len’s ability to do his job. He’ll have to remember to apologize for that later. “Just try not to die on me, okay?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sam says and disconnects the link. Len’ll be pissed that Sam hung up on him, but if they keep talking, Sam might be tempted, moreso than usual, to say something that’s better left unsaid. He shakes his head, but it doesn’t work to clear the thoughts out. “Spock, Chekov, we’re going to see if we can refine the transporter any while we wait to catch up with the  _Narada_. Sulu, you’ve got the conn. You know where to find me if you need me.”

“Aye, sir,” Sulu calls out as Sam leads Spock and Chekov into the lift.

  
\------

  
When the intruder alert sounds some time later, Nero rushes off with a shouted, “Spock!” leaving Winona alone with the Starfleet captain. Her palm is sweaty around the grip of her disruptor, but she dares not holster her weapon, not when she’s alone with the enemy.

“That would be my first officer coming to rescue me,” Pike says, his voice hoarse. There’s slime from the Centaurian slug mixed with drool and bile at the corner of his mouth; Winona locks her knees to keep herself from taking the two steps to his side and wiping his mouth with her sleeve, like she’d done dozens of times when James was a child. James, whose body was dragged from this room not even an hour ago.

“Your officer won’t succeed,” Winona tells him, pushing thoughts of James from her mind, gripping her disruptor tight enough that her fingers start to hurt. “He will be killed and then we will continue on our mission to prevent the destruction of Romulus from ever happening.”

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Pike says, sitting up as far as he can while still restrained. Winona has to admire his abdominal strength, especially with the slug and its toxins eating away at his spinal column. “Let me go. Come with me. I’ll make sure you’re protected, taken care of. Please, help us stop Nero from destroying our home.”

Winona can’t help her laughter or the rush of bitterness that come with Pike’s words. She hasn’t been on Earth in over twenty-five years and she stopped considering it home well over two decades ago. The  _Narada_  is her home now; it’s where she belongs. There is nothing for her on Earth.

“You’re twenty-five years too late to rescue me, Captain Pike,” Winona says, touching the tattoo at the base of her throat with the fingers of her left hand. She thinks about the ring from George that used to reside on her left hand, the ring Ayel had taken from her the day he tattooed the glyphs for loss and pain and memory onto her skin. She thinks about Ayel’s blood on James’s hands and James’s blood on Nero’s hands and how everything she’s ever cared about has been destroyed.

“It’s never too late to go home again,” Pike says, slumping back on the table and turning his head towards Winona. He’s silent for a long moment. When he finally speaks, he’s says the last thing Winona would have expected to hear. “You son’s missed you. Sam. He hardly remembers you, but I know--”

“Don’t bring my son into this!” Winona shrieks and is surprised to find her disruptor aimed at Pike, the gun held steady in her right hand and braced by her left. Hadn’t he learned his lesson last time he mentioned Sam and got pistol-whipped for it? “He has nothing to do with this. Maddie and Ti took care of him, I know they did.”

“They did, I promise, they did,” Pike says. His eyes are wide, his pupils blown from Nero’s questioning and probably a little from fear, not that he’d ever admit it, Winona thinks. “He’s in Starfleet now, assigned to  _Enterprise_. He’s one of the best officers, one of the best men I’ve had the honor to know.”

The barrel of the disruptor wavers, but Winona doesn’t drop her arms. Pike’s trying to distract her and she won’t let herself fall for it. She shifts, widening her stance, firming up her grip on the disruptor. Her arms are starting to get sore, but she pushes the pain aside, just like she’s been taught; acknowledgement of pain has no place in a confrontation.

“Shut up,” she says, disgusted with herself at how timid she sounds. She repeats herself, putting some bite into the words. “Shut up.”

“I know he would love to see you, to get to know you--”

“I said shut  _up_!”

There’s a commotion from the corridor, followed closely by the sound of weapons fire. ‘Fleeters, here to rescue their captain. It’s about time they showed up, Winona thinks.

Winona heads towards the door, leading with her disruptor, her boots sloshing through the water on the floor no matter how quietly she tries to tread. A man in a blue ‘Fleet uniform rushes through the door, a most likely ill-gotten disruptor held low, and he doesn’t manage to lift it before Winona’s snapped off a warning shot over his shoulder.

“Drop it,” Winona tells him. She hears Pike’s softly uttered, “Shit,” at almost the same moment she realizes the man before her is human and obviously not Spock. “Drop your weapon if you want to keep your head, Starfleet.” There is a small splash as the disruptor is dropped that Winona hardly notices when she finally gets her first good look at her new prisoner.

He’s young, maybe thirty, brown hair, with a slash along his cheekbone dripping some of the reddest blood Winona’s ever seen below blue eyes that haunt her dreams at night, eyes that once sparkled with mischief and love and desire and loyalty, eyes that James inherited from his father, that  _Sam_  inherited from his father.

Her disruptor slips from her grasp, splashing as it falls into the water near her feet, and her arms follow a moment later and hang limply at her sides. It feels like there’s an iron band around her lungs and she’s lightheaded and her tears are almost too stubborn to be fought back.

Sam just stares at her, visibly confused, and for a long moment, all is silent. Winona can tell the exact second it all clicks in Sam’s head, the exact second he figures out who she is and the part of her that is his mother wants to hold him and weep and never, ever let go while the greater part of her, the part of her that is more Romulan now than human, wishes she hadn’t dropped her weapon, that she could take away that look of pity and longing and  _grief_  from Sam’s face and replace it with the shock that comes with sudden death because this man, her  _son_ , is the enemy. 

 _Enemies cannot be suffered to live, Winona._  Nero’s wisdom, spoken by Ayel, and exemplified by James, words that Winona has very rarely had the need to heed, words that she can’t heed, not when her son is involved.

“Mom.” It’s not a question, but less a statement of fact. Uncertain. 

“Sam,” she returns, her tone just as unsure as her son’s. God, her  _son_ , who she hasn’t seen since he was barely more than a baby. She’s done her best not to think about him over the years, knowing she’d never get to see him again, but he’s occasionally crept into her thoughts and dreams; she’d never imagined that he’d look so much like George and her father at the same time, never thought that they’d meet again on a battlefield before the destruction of the Federation.

Sam is a sudden flurry of motion, high-stepping through the water to Pike, talking all the while. “Come on, Mom, help me get him up. We’ve got a plan and we’re running out of time and we need to get out of here before this ship gets blown to hell. Come  _on_ , let’s go.”

What Sam doesn’t notice in his self-made commotion is Nijil stepping through the door, leading with his upraised disruptor. Winona doesn’t waste time wishing for her own gun; she has her dagger out of its sheath in an instant and with a flick of her wrist, the dagger has embedded itself in Nijil’s neck before anyone even has the chance to blink. Nijil falls to the floor with a splash, the ripples reaching almost to Winona’s knees.

“Holy shit,” Sam says, his hands frozen on Pike’s restraints. 

Winona turns away from the body in the doorway, dismissing him as useless. He’d been a friend once, but he clearly never deserved her regard; he’d obviously become complacent and that complacency led to his death. “Hurry,” she tells Sam, who spurs back into motion, setting Pike free and getting him on his feet in under a minute. “Others will be here soon and you need to be gone before they get here.”

“Come with us,” Sam says and for just a moment, Winona sees the little boy she remembers her son to be: tall for his age, brown hair always flopping into his eyes, begging not to be left behind on Earth. She blinks and the vision is gone; Sam is an adult, a man she hardly recognizes. She doesn’t belong in his world anymore.

“No,” she tells him, stepping back. “Go now, before it’s too late.”

“Mom--”

“Go!” she shouts and is gratified to see him pull his communicator from his belt.

“Kirk to  _Enterprise_ , do it now.” Winona watches Sam watch her, their eyes locked, until he and Pike are gone, transported back to the relative safety of their ship. Then she turns and strides from the room, stopping only long enough to pull her dagger from Nijil’s body and wipe the blood from the blade onto his shirt.

She’s halfway to the command center when there’s an explosion from deep within the ship. She quickens her step; she needs to get to Nero before the inevitable end they’re heading for at warp speed.

  
\------

  
The first thing Sam’s aware of after materializing on  _Enterprise_  is that Pike is a damned heavy man, especially when he’s little more than deadweight in Sam’s arms. The next thing he notices is that Spock is next to him on the transporter pad, all in one piece, and that Chekov is gibbering excitedly in Russian from his spot behind the control board.

 _Shit, we actually managed to pull it off,_  Sam thinks, followed closely by,  _My mother’s alive,_  which is almost immediately followed by,  _Oh my god, I left my mother over there._

“Captain,” Sam starts to say but stops because he has no idea where to go from there. Pike’s barely conscious and obviously in no state to be answering questions, but he was _there_  and Sam needs to know that it was real, that his mother wasn’t just a figment of his imagination. 

The ship jolts then and it feels less like an impact than turbulence of some sort and Sam has more immediate things to think about. Len and Uhura rush into the transporter room while the ship’s still shaking, Uhura going to Spock, Len calling out a relieved sounding “Sam,” in the second before he’s supporting Pike on one side, his other hand reaching around to clasp Sam’s arm.

“I’ve got him, Sam,” Len says, his fingers digging into Sam’s arm hard enough to bruise, not that Sam cares right this second. “You go and finish this.” The  _And find me as soon as you can after so I can fix you and then kick your ass for being so reckless_  is left unstated but understood.

Sam nods, but doesn’t say anything. As soon as he starts talking to Len, he knows he won’t be able to stop and they don’t have time for that now. Instead, he leads his people out of the transporter room and to the nearest turbolift.

The ride to the bridge is silent and paradoxically both the longest and shortest fifteen seconds of Sam’s life. Spock is stock-still, hands at his side, though Sam notices the fingers of his right hand twitching towards Uhura, who is also very still, her eyes forward. Chekov is practically vibrating, with nerves or excitement or the need to take a piss, Sam’s not sure which and isn’t sure he cares.

Sam’s stomach is tied in knots and he thinks he’d be sick if he’d had the time to eat anything in the past twenty-four hours. His mother refused to leave the  _Narada_. The only way to ensure that Nero is stopped is to destroy his ship. Unless his mother has a sudden change of heart, she’s going to die today, right after Sam almost got her back. It’s not fucking  _fair_.

The turbolift doors open and Sam straightens, does his best to appear like he knows what the hell he’s doing, or at least not as scared shitless as he really is, and follows his fellow officers onto the bridge.

“Captain, we’re being hailed,” Hannity calls out before Uhura reclaims her post at the main comm board. The viewscreen is currently displaying sensor readouts of the  _Narada_ ; Spock’s explosion seems to have ignited whatever weaponry Nero used to create the black hole that destroyed Vulcan. The aft of the ship is on the event horizon, the gravitational pull stretching the ship to the breaking point.

“On screen, Lieutenant,” Sam says, coming to a halt in the space between the command chair and the helm station, Spock at his side. Chekov brushes past them, taps out his relief and takes his place next to Sulu at Navigation.

Nero’s face is on the view-screen; Sam can see consoles sparking and Nero’s officers fleeing in the background. Sam wants nothing more than to give the order to destroy the bastard, but he can’t and not just because he wants the chance to try to convince his mother to come with them back to Earth. He’s a biologist and cares more about his research than politics, but right now he has to think like a captain and diplomat; destroying the  _Narada_  when he could have saved the crew will do nothing to help the Federation’s relationship with Romulus, no matter how much he wants them to suffer for what they’ve done.

“ _Narada_ , this is Samuel Kirk, acting captain of the  _U.S.S. Enterprise_. Your ship is disabled and will be pulled into the black hole without assistance, assistance we are willing to render,” Sam says, hating himself for every word out of his mouth. 

Spock turns to him, looking as confused as Sam’s ever seen him. “Captain? Are you certain that is the wisest course of action?”

 _No,_  Sam’s brain is screaming to say,  _I know it’s not the wisest course of action._ What Sam does say is, “It’s the right thing, Mr. Spock, maybe the only way to salvage our ties with Romulus. It’s diplomacy.”

Spock starts to reply, but Sam’s attention is drawn by movement on the screen and he doesn’t hear whatever it is that Spock’s saying. There’s someone moving up behind Nero, someone the man hasn’t noticed. Sam blinks and realizes it’s his mother, dagger in hand.

Winona says something in Romulan; the computer is a second late with the translation, lending a strange disconnect to the scene. The computerized voice speaking the Standard translation of his mother’s words is flat, uninflected.

“This is for George,” she says, driving her dagger into Nero’s back. He stumbles and coughs up blood even as he throws an elbow up and drives it into Winona’s face, snapping her head back, blood spraying in an arc from her nose. She never loses her grip on the dagger, though, and withdraws it at the same time she wraps her left arm around Nero’s neck, just below his chin. “And this is for James.” The blade, already stained green with Nero’s blood, slides easily across the width of Nero’s throat.

Winona shoves Nero’s body away from herself and faces the viewer, red blood dripping from her nose and over her lips and chin, dark green blood on her arms and clothes. She looks crazed, dangerous.

“Mom,” Sam sighs and some distant part of his brain registers the shocked gasps from around the bridge, Spock next to him looking first at Sam then Winona and back again.

“Goodbye, Sam,” she says, raising a hand towards the video pickup, reaching for Sam, her fingers stained with Nero’s blood, and then the viewscreen goes black for a brief moment before shifting back to the sensor view of the  _Narada_.

“Captain,” Chekov says and damned if the kid doesn’t sound terrified. “We must leave now if we are to avoid being pulled into the black hole as well.”

“Mr. Sulu, full reverse,” Sam says, his eyes still glued to the sensor readings on the screen. He needs to keep it together, at least for a little while longer, and he doesn’t think he can do that if he sees the confusion and pity on anyone’s face. “Once we’re free of the black hole’s gravitational pull, set course for Earth.”

“Yes, sir,” Sulu replies, his fingers flying over his control board.  _Enterprise_  shakes as it pulls away from the black hole, the ship screaming as the black hole tries to tear her apart, the whine of the engines audible even on the bridge. They’re moving too slowly and soon come to a standstill before slipping back towards the event horizon. 

“Sulu, why aren’t we warping away from this thing?” Sam asks, dropping into the captain’s chair as the ship shudders violently around him, klaxons beginning to sound. Spock steps around him, presumably headed for his station.

“We  _are_  at warp,” Sulu says, not looking away from his board. Next to him, Chekov is muttering in mixed Russian and English, his hands flying over his console, no doubt frantically trying to math them out of this. The rest of the bridge crew is silent.

Sam stabs at the communicator built into the arm of the command chair as a crack races across the ceiling and a computerized voice states that structural integrity is at sixty-seven percent and falling. “Engineering, reroute all available power to the engines.”

The answer is faint, like the woman is almost too far away from the comm for the speaker to pick up. “We’ve already got everything going to the engines except life support, sir.”

“Captain, I believe if we jettison and then detonate the warp cores, we may be able to ride the shock wave far enough away from the singularity to be safe,” Chekov says, speaking over the female engineer, swinging around in his chair to face Sam.

“Spock?” Sam asks, his eyes still locked on the viewscreen. He wishes he knew more quantum physics and warp engineering so he’d know for himself whether blowing the cores is a good idea or more along the lines of suicide, but he’s surprisingly okay with trusting Spock’s opinion on this.

“That procedure is unprecedented, but I can see no other viable option at this point,” Spock answers, and Sam’s shocked to hear a note of uncertainty, maybe even fear, in Spock’s voice. Sam doesn’t know what to think of that, so he pushes it to the back of his mind to be analyzed later. If they make it to later.

“Did you hear that, Engineering?” Sam asks, getting an affirmative reply. “Then do it.”

Sam doesn’t take his eyes from the sensor readings on screen even as the cores are detonated and the ship is momentarily surrounded by the energy expended by the explosion before they are propelled away, everyone pushed back in their seats as the inertial dampeners struggle to keep up.

After a long moment, Sam finally looks away from the sensor readings; the  _Narada_  is gone, consumed completely by the black hole. He pushes himself to his feet and turns towards Spock and says, “Mister Spock, you have the conn. Contact department heads, get damage reports, and figure out where the hell we are exactly and how long it’ll take us to get home. I’ll be in the secondary Sickbay if you need me.”

Spock nods his acquiescence, but Sam can feel his eyes on his back all the way to the turbolift. The doors close, leaving Sam alone for the first time since seeing his mother on that ship and he lets himself slump against the wall for ten seconds, breathing deeply to try to quell the hysteria he can feel growing in his chest. 

He doesn’t remember exiting the lift or the walk to Sickbay; the next thing he knows, he’s standing at the observation window of the surgical suite, watching Len and two of his nurses work on Pike. It’s almost too much for Sam to stomach, but he can’t seem to look away. It’s so very rare that he gets to see Len truly in his element that he’ll take the sight of blood and gore and, holy shit, some kind of bug coming off of Pike’s spinal column. 

Sam feels the firm hand on his elbow the same time he hears, “Sir, if you’ll sit down, we can see to your injuries.” The woman is short, the top of her head barely level with Sam’s shoulder, with dark red hair and the distinctive spots of a Trill winding their way down her neck to disappear beneath her scrub top.

“I’m fine,” Sam tells her, gently shaking off her hand. “I’ll see Doctor McCoy when he’s done working on the captain, Doctor…”

“Peers, sir.”

“Doctor Peers,” Sam says, trying his best for a smile he knows doesn’t even look close to being sincere. Peers responds by folding her arms across her chest and giving him a glare that makes Sam think the look is either being taught at Starfleet Medical these days or that Len’s already starting to rub off on his new colleagues.

“Sir, unless you want to risk permanent injury, you need to be treated sooner rather than later,” she says, cocking her head to the side. “Doctor McCoy’s going to be in surgery for hours yet and, if I’m not mistaken, you have bruised ribs, definite head injuries, possible internal bleeding that could kill you before Doctor McCoy could see to you, and you’re heading for a major crash when the adrenaline finally wears off.”

“Okay, fine, you win,” Sam says, throwing his hands up, palms out, in defeat. He’d argue, but he doesn’t have the energy right now. He just wants to speak with Len and, barring that, he would like to be left alone to try to process the past twenty-four hours. God, the fleet, Vulcan, his  _mom_ …

“Very good, sir,” Peers says, jolting Sam from his thoughts. She grips his arm again, just above the elbow, and tugs him to a biobed in the far corner of the room, far away from the prying eyes of patients and medical staff alike.

Sam boosts himself up onto the bed and strips off his sweaty, bloody shirts, dropping them to the floor where he won’t have to see them. Peers scans him quickly and efficiently before reaching for a tray of instruments near the head of the bed. She prods at his shoulder and he takes the hint, lying back and folding his hands over his stomach, just below the cluster of bruises left by that burly Romulan before Sam managed to steal his gun and take him down.

“Hands at your side, sir,” Peers says and places a regen over the bruised skin. He hates the weird, tingly sensation of his bones knitting, but it’s better than the constant, dull pain of cracked ribs. While the regen on his ribs is working, Peers presses a hypospray to his neck a handful of times; it still stings, but she’s gentler than Len and after the day Sam’s had, he hardly reacts to the injections at all. “Don’t worry, sir, this is just a painkiller, some nutrient boosters, and an antibiotic cocktail. No sedatives for at least twelve hours due to your concussion.”

Sam nods and watches as Peers grabs a dermal regen before shifting her attention to the slash along his cheekbone. The pins-and-needles feeling of knitting skin is not quite painful, but definitely more annoying than his still tingling ribs.

Spock enters Sickbay as Doctor Peers is finishing up sealing Sam’s cheek. She hands Sam a damp cloth and he wipes the dried blood from his face, his new skin protesting a little at the rough weave of the cloth. In the meantime, Peers has removed the regen from Sam’s ribs and has moved on to healing the bruising that is now the only evidence of his once cracked ribs.

Sam waits until the doctor is finished and has handed him a tube of salve for any lingering soreness and a standard black undershirt before he turns to Spock. “Report, Commander,” he says, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the biobed, pulling his new shirt over his head. He resolutely doesn’t look at his soiled shirts still on the floor.

“All departments have reported in,” Spock says and hands Sam a PADD. Sam skims through the directory and isn’t the least bit surprised to see that all the reports are properly titled, alphabetized, and collated. “We are still receiving casualty reports as Deck Six and other portions of the ship that have been sealed are accessed. All able-bodied personnel with medical training have been instructed to report to Doctor M’Benga for assignment as we lost nearly half of our assigned medical personnel, including Doctor Puri, when the main Sickbay was destroyed in our initial confrontation with the  _Narada_.”

“Why not have them report directly to Doctor McCoy?” Sam asks, throwing a glance towards the doors of the surgical suite. “As I recall, he’s the acting CMO.”

“I took the liberty of assuming that Doctor McCoy would be occupied with Captain Pike’s treatment for several hours and would prefer not to be interrupted,” Spock answers, his eyes also drifting to the surgical suite. “Doctor McCoy does not strike me as the type of man to suffer unnecessary interruptions lightly.”

Sam nods and feels half a smile tugging at his lips; he has firsthand experience with Len’s temper and wouldn’t wish it on unsuspecting men and women who’re just trying to follow orders. “And what about the status of the ship?” he asks.

Spock shifts his weight, folding his hands together behind his back, and Sam’s eyes narrow. In anyone else, such a move would be innocuous, but it’s tantamount to fidgeting for Spock and it’s definitely a little worrisome.

“Impulse engines were damaged in the escape from the black hole, but our initial momentum from the warp core detonations is unhampered; we are continuing to travel at ninety-three point two percent impulse power.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ here, Commander,” Sam says.

Spock raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment on Sam’s choice of words. “Indeed, sir. Lieutenant Sulu reports that navigational sensors are currently nonfunctional and that we are, in his words, ‘flying blind.’ Ensign Chekov has extrapolated our location and heading and estimates that we are eight days from the nearest Starfleet outpost along our current trajectory, but we are unable to confirm that approximation at this time.”

“What about communications? Are we able to contact Starfleet to get a tow or send a distress signal?”

“Negative. Both long- and short-range communications are currently inoperable. Top priority has been given to both communications and navigational sensors, but Lieutenant Gaila reports that it will be at least nineteen hours until the systems are back online.” 

“Let the Lieutenant know that she can have whoever she needs, aside from those in Medical,” Sam says, handing Spock the PADD. “I want those systems up sooner than nineteen hours from now, if at all possible. I’m going to stay here and help out where I can, so you’ll have the Bridge, Commander. Comm me if something comes up.”

“Aye, Captain,” Spock says, but he doesn’t make a move to leave.

“Is there something else, Commander?” Sam asks.

Spock shifts again, the hand not holding the PADD clenching and then relaxing. “I would like to offer you my condolences on the death of your mother,” he eventually says, frowning a little and not quite meeting Sam’s eye. 

“Spock,” Sam breathes out, his chest tight with grief, not for himself but for Spock. Sam lost his mom twenty-five years ago and before today, he’d come to terms with the deaths of his parents; Spock’s had his entire life with his mother and now she’s gone, along with Spock’s entire  _planet_ , and Sam can’t even imagine how that feels. “I am so sorry.”

Spock nods and says, “Thank you,” and then, “Please notify me of any change in Captain Pike’s status and I will inform the rest of the crew.”

“Of course,” Sam says.

“If there is nothing else, sir, I will return to the bridge now.”

“Dismissed, Commander.”

Sam watches Spock go and only after the doors slide shut behind him does Sam push himself off from the biobed. He grabs his soiled uniform tunic and drops it in a bin labeled biohazard before making his way through the throng of wounded and medical staff towards Doctor M’Benga.

  
\------

  
“C’mon, Sam, time to wake up.” There’s a warm hand against the back of Sam’s neck, and Sam presses back into the touch before opening his eyes. Len’s face is level with his, his eyes looking greener than normal against the dark circles ringing them. Sam blinks slowly and brings his hand up and wraps his fingers lightly around Len’s wrist.

They sit that way for a long moment, but eventually, Len shakes his head and pulls his hand away, resting his palms against his knees and pushing himself to his feet with a groan. Sam sits up from where he’d fallen asleep on the desk, twisting and cracking his back as he goes. 

“What were you doing in my office?” Len asks, sitting on the edge of the desk, his scrub-clad leg brushing against Sam’s.

“Trying to catch up on reports,” Sam says, pushing a PADD across the desktop. “I tried to help out in Sickbay, but I was just getting in the way.” Doctor M’Benga had been more polite about it than that, saying that maybe Sam was better suited to other ventures at this point in time, but Sam knows the other man just wanted to get Sam out of his way. “So I came in here to try to figure out what the hell’s going on and I must’ve fallen asleep.”

“Can’t say I blame you,” Len says, running a hand over his cheek; Sam can hear his stubble rasping against his palm. “I’m exhausted and I haven’t done half the shit you have today.” He reaches out and presses his fingers to Sam’s cheek where Sam knows he was cut. The touch is clinical and not at the same time, lingering just a few seconds longer than strictly necessary. “This looks good.”

“Yeah, Doctor Peers does good work,” Sam says, pressing his hands flat against the desktop until his wrists hurt from the pressure to keep himself from reaching for Len and doing something stupid. He shakes his head and asks, “How’s Pike doing?”

Len sighs and slouches just a little more before saying, “He’s stable. Not great, but he’s not in any immediate danger. He’s too damned stubborn to die.”

“What did they do to him?” Sam asks, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers together over his stomach.

“What didn’t they do to him?” Len counters tiredly, folding his arms over his chest and Sam notices that Len’s scrub shirt is spotted with blood, Pike’s blood, and the sight of it leaves a knot of nausea deep in the pit of Sam’s stomach. He thinks of his mother, eyes wild and covered in blood, and is glad he doesn’t have anything in his stomach right now because Len’s desk really doesn’t need to be covered in vomit right now. 

Len notices Sam’s discomfort, but can’t know the reason because there’s no way he’s heard about Sam’s mom, despite the rampant rumor mill on board, not while he’s been busy in surgery. He presses his knee a little more firmly against Sam’s and says, “They tortured him, mainly cutting, though the restraints they had him in didn’t do him any favors. The worst of the damage was caused by the Centaurian slug I found gnawing on his spinal column. I got it off and did the best I could to repair the nerves, but we won’t know if there’s any permanent damage for a while yet.”

Sam nods and leans his head back until it’s resting against the back of the chair. He wonders how much of the damage done to Pike was inflicted by his mother. She was there and she was armed and god knows she had the inclination to do harm. Pike’s the only one still alive who would know and even if Sam had the balls to ask, it’s not like he could, not with Pike under Len’s care. 

Len nudges his leg and Sam opens eyes he hadn’t realized had drifted shut to see Len looking at him and not even trying to hide his worry. “When was the last time you slept in a bed, Sam?” Len asks, leaning forward slightly.

Sam actually has to think about it. He knows he slept the night before they got the distress call from Vulcan, but he’d been up late marking exams and hadn’t really slept all that well; he’d been looking forward to fitting a nap into his afternoon between classes. That was, what, two days ago?

“You’re no good to anyone if you haven’t slept,” Len says, pushing off from the desk and coming to stand next to Sam, his hand a welcome weight on Sam’s shoulder. “Go to bed. I’ll brief Spock on Captain Pike’s status and get a rotating schedule set up. How long until we get home?”

Sam grabs the closest PADD up from the desk and pulls up the latest barebones Engineering report; he’s fairly certain Lieutenant Gaila dictated it directly into the ship’s computer while in the midst of repairs, if the multilingual profanity is anything to go by. “Barring a miracle, we’re still thirteen hours from having communications up and approximately eight days from the nearest Starfleet outpost. That estimate will probably go down, though, once we get in touch with Starfleet and can get someone out here to give us a tow.”

“Go get some sleep, Sam, while you still can,” Len says, his voice firm and kind at the same time. “I’ll deal with Spock.”

Sam rests his head against Len’s forearm and breathes out a sigh, his eyes slipping shut. “Okay,” he says, “but only if you put yourself on the first sleep rotation. You’re no good either if you’re sleep deprived.”

“Deal.”

Sam straightens up and lets Len pull him to his feet. They end up practically toe-to-toe and Sam should move away, he really should, but he doesn’t. He rests his forehead against Len’s shoulder instead, his hands hanging limply at his sides. One of Len’s hands cups the back of Sam’s head at the base of his skull, holding him steady more than holding him close.

“What happened over there, Sam?” Len’s voice is quiet and right by Sam’s ear and Sam shakes his head, pressing his forehead more tightly against Len’s shoulder. “Sam, what happened?”

“I saw my mom.” His words are muffled by Len’s shirt, so he turns his head slightly, his forehead against the side of Len’s neck and repeats himself. “I saw my mom.” He watches Len’s Adam’s apple bob and gooseflesh rise on the other man’s skin. “She was alive and on the  _Narada_  and now she’s dead and I don’t know how I should feel about it.”

“She was captured when the  _Kelvin_  was destroyed.” It’s not a question, but Sam nods as best he can anyway. “And they didn’t kill her. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Sam says, reaching for Len and gripping his shirt tight. “She said something about…” He trails off, squeezes his eyes shut, and starts again. “Mom was pregnant when we thought she died, so pregnant that she was two weeks away from catching a shuttle to Earth for her maternity leave. Earlier, she said something about George and James right before the  _Narada_  was destroyed. I know she meant Dad and not me, but I don’t think she was talking about Grandpa Jim.”

Len takes a deep breath, one hand still cupping the back of Sam’s head while he wraps his other hand around Sam’s arm. He bows his head and his breath gusts over Sam’s neck when he speaks. “You think they kept her alive for the baby? For this James?”

“Yes,” Sam says, his hands twisting even tighter in Len’s shirt. “Maybe. I don’t know. I got the impression that whoever James was, he was already dead.”

“Sam,” Len sighs, his grip on Sam tightening, and Sam knows, he just fucking  _knows_ , that Len’s about to start offering sympathies and that’s the last thing he needs right now, the last thing he wants. He lifts his head from Len’s shoulder, dislodging Len’s hand on his head, and brings his hands up to cup Len’s face.

“Don’t, Len, please,” he says and he hates how desperate he sounds. He shakes his head and  _wills_  Len to understand. Len just says his name again, but before he can get his next words out, words that Sam’s sure aren’t anything he wants to hear, Sam’s pressed his mouth to Len’s.

It’s nothing breathtaking or romantic; if anything, it’s slightly awkward, their eyes still open, lips just pressed together, Sam’s fingers digging into Len’s scalp, Len’s hands wrapped tight around Sam’s biceps. After a moment, Sam pulls back just far enough to speak, his lips still brushing Len’s with every word.

“Please, Len, I don’t want to talk about it right now. Just let it lie. Please.”

Len leans their foreheads together, his nose brushing against Sam’s. “Okay,” he says, his breath puffing damply against Sam’s lips. “But this isn’t the end of this conversation.”

“Thank you,” Sam says, his eyes slipping shut as Len tips forwards and presses their lips together again. Sam feels his stomach start to unknot and he presses against Len, trusting he won’t let Sam fall.

And he doesn’t. 

  
\------

  
Len’s already on the bridge when Sam finally makes it up there after checking that the various science labs are all good and ready for shove-off. In fact, Sam’s the last senior officer to report to the bridge, but he’s not too worried about being called out on his tardiness. Aside from Len and Uhura, Sam’s the only senior officer whose department isn’t based from the bridge and the science department is by far the largest department on board. Despite all rumblings to the contrary,  _Enterprise_  is still, first and foremost, a ship of exploration.

Sam slips into his chair at the back of the bridge as Spock starts calling for status reports, starting with Uhura and working his way around the bridge counterclockwise. Sam brings up the diagnostics he’d started hours ago and eyes the status reports from the various labs spread throughout the ship.

“Commander Kirk, status?”

“All labs report optimal conditions and sensors are at one hundred percent,” Sam says, turning in his chair to face the captain. He can see open space on the viewscreen behind Spock.

“Very well,” Spock says, swiveling back around to face the viewer. “Mister Sulu, initiate separation procedure from spacedock.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Sam turns away from the viewer as Len steps up beside him, bumping his hip against Sam’s shoulder. “You ready for this?” Len asks in an undertone as Sulu and Chekov call out status reports from the front of the bridge. Len’s not even looking at him, hands folded behind his back, his eyes glued to the starfield. 

Sam’s fingers are itching to reach out and touch Len, but they’d agreed and there’s no way Sam’s going to be the first one to break the rules, especially not before they’ve even properly set out. But then Len looks at him, his eyes bright and, dare he say, excited and Sam can’t help himself. His hand comes to rest over Len’s, out of sight of the rest of the bridge.

“Course laid in, Captain,” Sulu calls out.

Sam thinks about his father, who didn’t live long enough to know that his sacrifice was in vain, and his mother who spent twenty-five years as a captive and his brother, the one that Pike saw, the one who lived and died like a Romulan because he didn’t know any differently. He thinks about Len, Len who hates space, Len who could’ve stayed on at Starfleet Medical, Len who took the permanent posting on  _Enterprise_  because Sam agreed to be Spock’s first officer.

Sam smiles and squeezes Len’s hand and says, “Couldn’t be any readier.”

“Warp five, please, Mister Sulu,” Sam hears Spock say, but he can’t look away from the smile on Len’s face and how he looks ten years younger without a scowl on his face.

“Engage.”

 **THE END**

**Author's Note:**

> Major, major thanks go to [green_postit](http://green-postit.livejournal.com/), for all the handholding, cheerleading, cajoling, bribing, and beta-ing that got me to the finish line with this story. Many thanks to [shinychimera](http://shinychimera.livejournal.com/) and [emmypenny](http://emmypenny.livejournal.com/) for being so awesome and coming up with art and a fanmix, respectively, that perfectly complement and enhance this story. Thanks also go to the ladies at [jim_and_bones](http://community.livejournal.com/jim_and_bones/) for the support and the word wars that kept me writing when all I wanted to do was throw this out.


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